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duplication

Much of Animal rights is duplicated in History of animal rights; any opposition to trimming down Animal rights and leaving it as a summary of the history article? --KarlB (talk) 21:29, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

any thoughts? --KarlB (talk) 17:33, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
I saw your original post, and didn't reply until now because I don't have strong feelings either way. I guess my main observation is that I don't really see a need for a separate history page. It's not like the history is such an extensive subject, and it's reasonable to include the history here. I kind of feel like the existence of the separate history page is an artifact of efforts to make the subject look bigger than it really is. So I guess I'd lean towards merging the history into this page, and making the other just a redirect to here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
I would object to trimming. The history page was copied from this one, so I've redirected it back here. The issues here are the kinds of things you would read about in the animal rights literature describing the background, so it's appropriate to have them on this page. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, my suggestion was to trim in Animal rights, but keep in history. If you're both suggesting to remove history and keep it all here, that's fine with me also. However, the branch was made in 2008; 4 years later, the histories have drifted, so you've lost a bit by just redirecting without considering a merge instead (that would move over some of the changes since 2008 in the history article.) a 3-way merge tool may be needed to help sort this out. --KarlB (talk) 18:40, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
I'll look at it again to see if any text can be merged into this page. We can't merge the histories, because it would mean the history of this article would make no sense (a revision of this page would be followed by a revision of the other). SlimVirgin (talk) 22:42, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
Karl, I'm a bit concerned about your idea of a three-way merge (still not sure what that means). The history article was created by copying a lot of text that I wrote word-for-word into another article. The article was then developed in a way that caused deterioration, using websites as sources, making factual errors, and contradicting the article that had been copied over. So the last thing we need is for poor sourcing or mistakes to be copied over here -- unless I'm still misunderstanding what you mean. (If I am, I apologize. When I think of a merge, I think of merging histories in the technical sense.)
The development and concept of animal rights is an academic subject, which is studied in philosophy and law faculties in particular, as a result of which there is an extensive academic literature, which is growing faster than anyone can read it. Those are the sources on which this article has to be based.
What I plan to do here is (a) update the text to improve the writing and to make sure we're using the highest quality sources (which the article doesn't currently do all the time); (b) format the refs consistently; and (c) add material to the article so it's not out of sync with the latest (or best) academic work. I can't do it overnight, though, because it's a big-ish job. There won't be major changes (nothing contentious), but it's fiddly work and will require a lot of reading on my part, so it's necessarily laborious. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:34, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks; in my review of the changes, I didn't see what you are claiming (e.g. factual deterioration and use of websites as sources, etc) instead I saw several improvements, which have now been added back the original. A 3-way merge is used when two pieces of content share the same source document - in this case, the shared source was the version c. 2008 when the text was first copied over. using a 3-way-merge tool, we can calculate what has been added in both branches, and then it will flag conflicts that have to be dealt with manually; but in most cases, it will simply bring in changes from both sides. This picture gives an idea: [1]. This explains in great detail [2]. But you don't need to worry about the details of how it works - the bottom line is, because we had a duplicate set of content (basically the whole history section) that evolved along two different evolutionary paths, and since valuable additions were made to both branches, a 3-way merge was called for here.--KarlB (talk) 03:48, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

  checkY Merger complete. 3-way merge completed; which brought in changes from History of animal rights since 2008 back into this article. I looked at all of the edits individually, and they all seemed reasonable, sourced, and value-added. --KarlB (talk) 03:48, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I seem to be talking to myself here. :) Karl, I've removed the merge tag from the talk page, because what you did is restore parts of an older version of this article (i.e. Animal rights) from over four years ago (which I wrote, so I recognize the writing). Perhaps you thought you were merging material here from the fork only?

Anyway, adding the merge tag to the talk page makes this article look as though it took material from elsewhere on Wikipedia, but it didn't. Also, I don't want to edit war with you, but you've restored some of the wordiness, and the old formatting, e.g. image instead of file, old ref formats, date linking, etc (diff). SlimVirgin (talk) 03:52, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The merge tag is there to make it clear that this is over and done with - e.g. merged for good; and it provides a convenient link to the history and talk page; much of this is required for WP licensing purposes in any case. The other issues are rather minor; I've already fixed image vs file, and we can get rid of date linking, etc. Re the so-called wordiness, I don't know who wrote those words (looking at the history of both articles they are full of eds other than SV); but the things I brought *back* over, which were either added in the History article or deleted from this one at some point, given that the history article doesn't exist anymore, it made sense to me to beef up some of the sections here. If it needs to be trimmed slightly ok, but I think net net the additions are positive. Minor issues of formatting will of course arise, but those can be dealt with quite easily. Just to be clear, what I did was a 3-way merge, which integrates differences between the original, and the two branches - but any content added would in all likelihood have come from the latest revision of the History of animal rights article (which may *appear* to you to be old, since some parts haven't been modified since c.2010/2011) --KarlB (talk) 04:07, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Order of sections

Does anyone else have a view about placing the philosophy first? I originally placed the development of the idea first, in part because history/origins are usually placed first on WP, and in part because it traces how concern for animals based on a concern for human beings (i.e. cruelty to animals is bad for humans, or damage to animals damages human property, so don't do it for those reasons) developed into the idea that animals needed protection for their own sake. This culminated in several texts explicitly mentioning animal rights, then Singer's Animal Liberation in 1975, which triggered the start of the animal liberation movement. So it seems to make sense to explain that first.

On the other hand, I do prefer the look of placing the philosophy first (Byelf2007's version), and it's probably more readable that way. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

How about this--
First, we have a "historical background" section, which talks about how humans views animals up until the notion of "animal rights". Second, we have the debate. Third, we have development of the idea of "animal rights" after the idea came about. This would more or less be consistent with the "Animal cognition" article as it is now. Sound good? Byelf2007 (talk) July 16 2012
I'll take a look at that article. My concern is that it would require a lot of rewriting to preserve the flow. Also, there is no cut-off point, as in "humans started thinking about animal rights at time T." There was a gradual shifting of attitudes, which the development section traces, so I'm not sure I'd know how to split it up as you suggest. Maybe we could experiment with a draft on a user subpage? SlimVirgin (talk) 05:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Yea. If we can't figure it out, then I think we should stick with the way it is now (your version). While I generally think that we ought to have explanation before history, I agree with you that sometimes it's impossible for the reader to understand the explanation part without first reading about the historical development of the subject (like in the "animal cognition" article, for example). Byelf2007 (talk) July 16 2012
I have to go offline shortly, but maybe I'll set up a user subpage and play around with sections; if you'd be willing to work on it too, that would be great. Maybe we can find something that makes sense for the reader and also looks good. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:44, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
My opinion would be to stay with the order that we have had. I think that the lead section gets the reader oriented with respect to what the concept is, and it's a good idea to stick with the common practice of putting things historically. By instead putting recent and present-day thinkers at the beginning, the page would take on a tone of recentism. I looked at animal cognition, and there's a key difference between these two pages. That page is about a natural phenomenon, whereas this page is about a line of human thinking. For cognition, the history of how it was studied is less central than is the explanation of what it is. (Also, recent "history" is about research that is ongoing.) In contrast, animal rights is about ideas that have developed over time, so it makes sense to present them as they have developed, in historical order. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:52, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
That makes sense. One thing I'll do soon is make sure the lede sufficiently summarizes the philosophical approaches section. My concern is that the lede may not provide a sufficient explanation of what animals rights is prior to getting to the historical development section. Byelf2007 (talk) July 16 2012

Just to explain the structure of the current lead:

  • (paragraph 1): the basic idea, which all/almost all animal rights advocates would support
  • (paragraph 2): outline of the two main political and two main philosophical approaches: protectionism ("let's focus on improving things for now, and worry less about theory"), which tends to accompany a utilitarian outlook; and abolitionism ("we should be campaigning to end animal use, not modify it"), which tends to accompany a deontological/rights-based outlook. And I've named the two key thinkers from the utilitarian/deontological divide.
  • (paragraph 3): outline of the legal rights issue
  • (paragraph 4): outline of the criticism

We could write an overview of the philosophy and place it before the development section: an extended lead, if you like. I've seen this done before in articles with a long background/history section, and it works well, though I can't offhand think of an example. But it would give us a compromise between starting with the development or starting with the philosophy. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:38, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you both. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Singer in lead

Hi Bilby, I see you're removing from the lead that Singer focuses on the avoidance of animal suffering. [3]

This is the point of the protectionism/aboliotionism distinction. The former want to ameliorate animal suffering. The latter want to abolish animal use regardless of the issue of suffering (suffering is an issue for them too, obviously, but it's not their theoretical focus; their focus is on rights). So removing this from the lead leaves the average reader not seeing what the difference is.

Bear in mind that the lead is not about Singer's preference utilitarian views in general; it's about his view (and the protectionist view in general) that animals have an interest in not suffering, and that those interests ought to be taken into account. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:38, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify:
  • SV: "These range from protectionism, represented by the philosopher Peter Singer, who as a utilitarian focuses on the avoidance of animal suffering rather than on the concept of moral rights, to abolitionism, represented by the philosopher Tom Regan, who argues that at least some kinds of animals are "subjects-of-a-life," and have moral rights for that reason."
  • Bilby: "These range from protectionism, represented by the philosopher Peter Singer, who has a utilitarian focus rather than focusing on the concept of moral rights, to abolitionism, represented by the philosopher Tom Regan, who argues that at least some kinds of animals are "subjects-of-a-life," and have moral rights for that reason."
SlimVirgin (talk) 03:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
The problem is that Singer doesn't focus on suffering, so the line seems misleading. Singer is a preference utilitarian, so he focuses on the meeting of preferences or interests. One of these is going to be a preference not to suffer, so it is certainly important and the presence of an ability to suffer is an indicator of the existence of at least one interest, but that's not the focus as such.
There is an important difference between Regan and Singer, but both would have an equal interest in avoiding animal suffering. Certainly Singer doesn't accept moral rights and Regan does, in a sense, so that is an important distinction to draw. But Singer's interest in suffering is more of a secondary concern that emerges from recognising and considering interests. This seems in keeping with what you said above - my concern is with claiming a focus for Singer that he doesn't really hold. - Bilby (talk) 05:10, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Singer's approach to animal rights (as opposed to his approach elsewhere) is based on a utilitarian desire to minimize suffering. That is the core concern of the protectionist movement. Animals have an interest in avoiding suffering, and the utilitarian wants to take those interests into account. I have an introductory/high-school textbook on animal rights here that says exactly this about Singer, but it's a bit basic to use as a source (Hursthouse's, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals if you know it). And I've used Singer (1975) himself as a source in the lead.
At the moment, we say Singer has a utilitarian focus, but we don't say on what, and we need to say something (interests, suffering, etc). If you can think of a better way to word it, so that it meets your concerns, that would be good (but also so that someone not familiar with philosophy would understand it). Hursthouse summarizes it as: "[Singer's] argument is based on the (negative) utilitarian idea that we should minimize suffering, and on the principle of equality." SlimVirgin (talk) 05:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I know Hursthouse. :) I'll see what I have here, although most of my ethics stuff is back at my office, and now that marking is out of the way I hoped to avoid that for a few days. :) Thing is, I don't think we're saying different things, or that this is entirely counter to what Hursthouse is saying. Animals do have an interest in not suffering, using Singer's approach, and as a preference utilitarian Singer wants to meet their interests, so he would clearly be all for mininizing suffering. My problem is with the "focus" part. I don't tend to see Singer as focusing on preventing animal suffering, (although that is a logical outcome of his work), but instead focuses on taking their interests into account. This will tend to result in the same end, but it doesn't necessarily do so.
It may prove to be the case that we can only word it in terms of suffering - my concern is simply that it doesn't really capture the utilitarian view, not that it is entirely wrong. I'll see what I can dig up - I don't mind much how you want it to sit in the meantime, and I don't think I'm in any real disagreement with you, just that I'd rather see wording which better captures the "preference utilitarian" part of Singer's work, or alternatively focus a bit more on the abolitionist vs protectionist distinction in general. I wish we could focus more on the utilitarian vs deontology distinction, as that's probably the key one, but I agree that this would overly complicate the lead and isn't really the distinction with abolitionists anyway, so much as the distinction between Singer and Regan as individuals. - Bilby (talk) 06:36, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I take your point about it not summarizing the utilitarian view, but bear in mind that the point is to summarize the protectionist view, and Singer's utilitarianism is representative of it. They are two basic positions in AR theory -- abolitionism and protectionism. All the approaches end up as one or the other. I deliberately didn't focus in the lead on the utilitarian/deontology distinction, because increasingly academics are writing that they wish people would stop pushing all AR theorists into one of these two positions. But we do say quite a bit about it in the section about the different philosophical approaches.
David Sztybel in Marc Bekoff's Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare also summarizes the Singer position as the minimization of suffering, by the way. We could use the words "minimization of suffering," rather than "avoidance of suffering," which would better reflect the utilitarian position. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:53, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
This is a great discussion - I tend to forget how much I enjoyed studying Regan and Singer for my thesis (although I'll admit to a preference towards Regan's approach). :) I guess my concern is that in trying to describe the protectionist stance, we're ascribing to Singer an oversimplification of the preference utilitarian view. If the intent is to describe protectionism vs abolitionism it might be better to take a higher level view, rather than looking at exemplars. Alternatively if the aim is to distinguish between Regan and Singer than I think we'll need to play with the wording a bit more in order to better represent the focus of Singer's approach. Either way I'll do some digging and see if I can find something as well. :) - Bilby (talk) 08:01, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm enjoying the discussion too. :) I'm trying to have it both ways -- trying to introduce the two key philosophers, and the two main animal rights positions, in a couple of sentences that a philosopher would find accurate, and that someone not familiar with philosophy or animal rights would both understand and appreciate the importance of. I take your point that I am mixing and matching, and it might be better to leave out examples. But they are convenient pegs, and if I lose those pegs then I lose the consequentialism/deontology distinction entirely. I wonder whether this would do (it might be too long -- I've not looked at it yet in situ):

Advocates approach the issue from a variety of philosophical positions, which can be reduced to two basic approaches. Protectionists seek incremental reform in how animals are treated, with a view to ending animal use entirely, or almost entirely. This view is represented by the philosopher Peter Singer, whose focus as a utilitarian is not on moral rights, but on the argument that animals have interests, particularly an interest in not suffering, and that there is no moral or logical reason not to award those interests equal consideration. The abolitionist position is that animals do have moral rights, and that the pursuit of incremental reform fails to respect those rights, and may even make the position of animals worse by encouraging human beings to feel comfortable about using them. This position is represented by the philosopher Tom Regan, who as a deontologist argues that at least some animals are "subjects-of-a-life," with beliefs, desires, memories, and a sense of their own future, and that they have moral rights for that reason alone. Regan's position leads him to the view that animals must be treated as ends in themselves, not as a means to an end.

By the way, there's no rush for this, so if you want to take some time to think about it, that's fine by me. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:45, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I've tweaked it a little, and looked at it on the page. It would look something like this (I moved material from the current second paragraph to the first so that the second wasn't too long). SlimVirgin (talk) 04:44, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
Bilby, I think I'm going to add the suggestion above to the lead for now, because it has more explanatory power than the current second paragraph. If you come up with another suggestion, we can always change it again, and I'll continue to think about whether it could be expressed differently. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:35, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
I think your wording is great. Thankyou. :) Much better than I could have done. - Bilby (talk) 16:57, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Recent additions

Hi SSZvH7N5n8, I'm sorry, but I'm going to revert most of your additions. Reasons:

  • The Ryder image isn't free; it would have to be released by the filmmakers.
  • Darwin and Nietzsche weren't animal rights advocates, though you're right that we should add something to the history section about the effect of Darwin, but it has to be based on academic sources. That Nietzsche said human beings were cruel animals isn't related to animal rights, which is not to say there is nothing interesting to add about Nietzsche and animals, but it would have to be written to make it clearly relevant (again, using academic sources).
  • Euthanasia of animals by PETA isn't an academic (or even any other kind of) criticism of animal rights.
  • I don't mind your "Measurement and origins" section, but it would have to be written differently, and we'd have to explain (or it would have to be obvious) why it was related to animal rights. The Jenia Meng source you used was a PhD thesis. [4]

Having said all that, I don't want to discourage anyone with knowledge of AR from editing this article. It's just a question of writing the material differently, and of using better sources (and also sticking closely to what the sources say, and the context in which they say it). SlimVirgin (talk) 17:20, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

[Ryder image] is released by the filmakers, you can email them and ask. http://thesuperiorhuman.ultraventus.info/
"Darwin and Nietzsche weren't animal rights advocates". Why does this matter? They are animal rights supporters. They are primarily known for other things at present. But it does not mean they did not support and advocate animal rights.
Search "PETA Euthanasia" in google. Then tell people if the issue/criticism is significant.
PHD thesis is considered as reliable academic source by wikipedia guildline last time I checked. This thesis has been cited by many peer reviewed paper. see list of references http://jmeng.goodeasy.info/publications/Reviews_OriginsOfAttitudesTowardsAnimals_JMeng2009.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSZvH7N5n8 (talk • contribs)
  • Image: You will have to post on the image page that they have released it, and send a copy of the email to permissions at wikimedia dot org. If you don't know how to request a release, let me know and I'll help you word it.
  • Please supply academic sources that say Darwin and Nietzsche were animal rights supporters.
  • Google search isn't good enough re the point about PETA, and anyway that has nothing to do with this article.
  • Unpublished PhD isn't an RS, but if it was published we can perhaps use it. I looked but couldn't find it.
  • Bottom line: anything you add needs good sources and you have to make the points the way the sources themselves did. No imaginative use of sources (see this policy) -- nothing that would surprise an academic familiar with the literature.
  • If you type four tildes after your posts (top left of the keyboard), that will produce your user name and a timestamp. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 00:17, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Image: You will have to post on the image page that they have released it, and send a copy of the email to permissions at wikimedia dot org. If you don't know how to request a release, let me know and I'll help you word it.

I am checking on this SSZvH7N5n8 (talk)

  • Please supply academic sources that say Darwin and Nietzsche were animal rights supporters.

The most important thing is those contents close related to animal rights. Nietzsche said himself in writing, he think humans are animals and humans are cruel to animals. I quote his words and cited RS. Darwin's theory invalidated human-animal gap. Without the gap in mind, people would naturally extend their compassion to animals. I already provided source, search "evolution, animal rights" in google book if you want large amount of other sources.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Google search isn't good enough re the point about PETA, and anyway that has nothing to do with this article.

wikipedia article should incorporate significant issues.The issue is also on PETA's wikipedia page. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_%28web%29 SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Unpublished PhD isn't an RS, but if it was published we can perhaps use it. I looked but couldn't find it.

"Unpublished PhD isn't an RS" what is your source of this statment? PhD thesis are peer reviewed and are typically availabe at university libraries, it is published. If it is not RS why it is cited by peer reviewd journal articles? "Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a PhD, and which are publicly available, are considered publications by scholars and are routinely cited in footnotes. They have been vetted by the scholarly community" see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sourcesSSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Bottom line: anything you add needs good sources and you have to make the points the way the sources themselves did. No imaginative use of sources (see this policy) -- nothing that would surprise an academic familiar with the literature.

Please discuss calmly, bottom line, I already supplied most information you asked in previous versions. They would not surprise an academic familiar with the scientific literature. Please read carefully before you revert other people's editing. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Rejecting science

SlimVirgin said "The page is about animal rights, and the ideas that led to that concept or thwarted it". Why scientific approach of animal rights not allowed on this page? Plenty of scientists support animal rights without a political or phylosopical theory. The status of the article is that it is not only focus on some groups of people, but also reject science.

Below is a version having my editing about scientists. It was removed. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&oldid=503240894

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.206.224 (talk • contribs)

Please see above. As I said, I think it's a good idea; it just has to be written differently and based (preferably) on academic sources. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:00, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
I disagree; I think the additions are fine; rather than reverting, the solution should be to improve wording or add additional sources; incremental is a fine approach. Also, I don't recall any wiki-rule anywhere that says things must be written in the way one editor prefers, or that they must use academic sources. Finally, a PhD thesis is a perfectly fine source; these are regularly quoted in the literature; PhD theses are published through their submission and approval, and are regularly catalogued by university libraries. If you can find a better source that is published that says essentially the same thing, that is even better, but if the best source is a PhD thesis I see no problem with it.--KarlB (talk) 01:48, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
I can add more sources. I think Darwin deserve a photo though, for his significant contribution to animal rights. Many animal rights scholar in the article have used evolution to support their arguments. There are also photos of animal rights critics in the article, having a photo does not imply a pro animal rights position. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSZvH7N5n8 (talk • contribs) 03:32, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Rejecting science

SlimVirgin said "The page is about animal rights, and the ideas that led to that concept or thwarted it". Why scientific approach of animal rights not allowed on this page? Plenty of scientists support animal rights without a political or phylosopical theory. The status of the article is that it is not only focuses on some groups of people, but also rejects science.

Below is a version having my editing about scientists. It was removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&oldid=503240894

I am a scientist and I am interested in animal rights. It is disappointing to see the article biased towards Arts.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 23:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Consensus

Before altering the article again - please achieve some sort of consensus for the changes. I agree with Slimvirgin's assesment of your alterations..Modernist (talk) 01:36, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I am concerned that the proposed section is a case of synthesis from primary sources. I'm not really seeing any scholarship that ties the ideas together to yield the proposed text. Instead, it reads like Wikipedia editors making all the connections, and that violates the fundamental principle of no original research. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, it isn't even "the scientific consensus". Scientists have lots of opinions about animal rights, but to present those opinions as (1) animal rights growing out of Darwin's theories, and (2) some sort of mismash of studies about how people feel about animals, really is original research. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I said, there are plenty of literatures on the issues. I can add more source. Here is one demostrate the scientific connection between evolution and animal rights, it's a survey. Support for Animal Rights as a Function of Belief in Evolution, Religious Fundamentalism, and Religious Denomination. http://www.animalsandsociety.org/assets/library/745_s3.pdf The conclusion is: because conservative Protestants and fundamentalists adhere to religious doctrine that espouses a discontinuity between humans and other species, they have lower support for animal rights and proponents of evolution who tend to view species as interconnected advocate animal rights more so than creationists and believers of intelligent design theory.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 00:37, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Tryptofish, information in the science section does not has to be consensus, in fact, it can and should include different scientific views. This article should include quantitative researches (science) if it care about scientific quality. They are objective research methods that using numbers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSZvH7N5n8 (talk • contribs) 00:54, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I added Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:39, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I added information about Darwin's concern of animal slavery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSZvH7N5n8 (talk • contribs) 02:08, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

If it isn't the consensus, then it shouldn't be called "consensus" in the section header. Please carefully read WP:SYNTH. Adding more sources isn't the issue, so much as you making the connection amongst the sources that, taken together, they are about the subject matter of this page. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Tryptofish I am sorry the heading misled you. Modernist mean consensus of changes. I read WP:SYNTH, but I cannot see which part of the section have the issue. Can you be more specific. I can add more sources to address your concerns accordingly. Also I am wondering, any one is objected to list Darwin as early proponents? SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 22:29, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

All or most of the changes you are making are based on the film, The Superior Human? (2012), which people can watch here on YouTube. It was produced and researched by Jenia Meng, the woman whose unpublished PhD thesis you want to use as a source (for more information on the thesis, see here and here on Google), and who appears to be a computer scientist. Her website is here.
It's an interesting film and I enjoyed watching it. But there are several problems with the edits you've based on it:
(1) it's a personal opinion, an essay in effect, not an academic work;
(2) it's about human exceptionalism, not animal rights theory; the two are related, but they are not the same thing -- the latter is a solution to the former, if you like;
(3) the only person interviewed in the film who is a current academic that we might want to use a lot as a source is Bernard Rollin, and we have no need to use him via that film (we can and do use some of the others for specific issues -- e.g. Ryder on the Oxford Group);
(4) you are going even further than the film did (e.g. Ryder mentions Darwin's attitude to animals; you add Darwin's name as an animal rights proponent to the infobox, as though it is established as a fact, when even Ryder did not say that).
Also, this article isn't about PETA, and PETA's views on euthanasia have nothing to do with animal rights theory or animal rights activism, so it's inappropriate for this article, and definitely so for the lead.
Finally, screenshots from the film are copyrighted; the film says "all rights reserved." SlimVirgin (talk) 17:33, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
To address your point above about Darwin, you would need to produce an appropriate academic source (i.e. someone writing within animal rights scholarship, whether for or against; or an academic who is an expert on Darwin) who says that Darwin was an early animal rights proponent. Being opposed to animal cruelty, and believing that animals were rational, doesn't mean he was thinking in terms of animal rights as such. A place to start looking would be James Rachels (1990). Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism. Oxford University Press. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:52, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
SSZvH7N5n8, I'm sure that SlimVirgin will confirm that I don't frequently agree with her. But I agree with her 100% here, both in what she says to you, and in the edits she made to the page. You asked me to clarify what I meant about SYNTH. SlimVirgin's comment number 4 and her added comment at the end are exactly what I meant. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:47, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

SlimVirgin. First of all, you revert much more changes than those you have addressed here. For example those of Richard Dawkins. Please read Wikipedia conflict of interest carefully http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest. "State facts and statistics, don't be vague or general." I provided many statistics of animal rights from difference sources (surveys, at least 3 different sources), However you removed them all without explanations.

Second, I will comment on those issues you mentioned.

You said, PETA's views on euthanasia have nothing to do with animal rights activism. Search animal rights in Google, PETA's website appears two be NO 2. Do you think PETA's policy is nothing to do with animal rights activism? If this is not significant, why ALF's criticism should be in the lead? Provide source to justify the article's selective choice of ALF.

As I already said, the image of Ryder are in the public domain. See the official website for a public domain notice. http://thesuperiorhuman.ultraventus.info/movie/press/resource/ SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:04, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I have restored public domain image of Ryder, I am fine with not adding Darwin as AR supporters until some one add more source.

"only person interviewed in the film who is a current academic...is Bernard Rollin". Please provide reliable source for this statement. What about Steven Best.

As I already said. Wikipedia guideline: "Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a PhD, and which are publicly available, are considered publications by scholars and are routinely cited in footnotes. They have been vetted by the scholarly community" see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_source. It's unfortunate that SlimVirgin are not familiar with inter library loan and refuse to follow Wikipedia guideline.

I am following Wikipedia COI guideline, adding more statistic of animal rights into the page. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:57, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

SlimVirgin said "it's about human exceptionalism, not animal rights theory". I disagree with this statement. 1) why scientific theory of animal rights ( based on evolution and statistics) is not theory? Those are my editing; 2) Please provide Wikipedia policy that require the article to only include theories. Please explain why other things related to the topic are not allowed. 3) If SlimVirgin take 'animal rights theory' idea of the article seriously, I would like to ask her remove animal rights history from the page ASAP. As she said, it is not animal rights theory; the two are related, but they are not the same thing. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 05:56, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

You asked me above:

"only person interviewed in the film who is a current academic...is Bernard Rollin". Please provide reliable source for this statement. What about Steven Best.

Just noting here that I actually wrote: "... the only person interviewed in the film who is a current academic that we might want to use a lot as a source is Bernard Rollin." What I meant is that Best is a good source for certain issues (e.g. certain forms of animal rights activism), as is Ryder (e.g. on the Oxford Group). But Rollin is a good source on animal rights theory in general, and is someone we should perhaps be using more.
The "historical development" section of the article is about the development of the idea of animal rights: the ideas that it grew out of, and the ideas that hindered its development. The concept of human exceptionalism is not the same as the concept of animal rights, though of course they are closely related. But a person could agree that there is nothing special about human beings, and still not support the idea that nonhuman animals have moral rights, or ought to have legal rights, or that their interests ought to be given equal consideration. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:56, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Globalization of article view

Would be good to see balanced information about non-abrahamic religious groups, such as India, far east, Greece, and indigenous peoples. They are more than 80% of world population. For more information please see the movie 'The Superior Human?': http://thesuperiorhuman.ultraventus.info/ 60.241.220.89 (talk) 08:18, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a good article, but it is too Western centric. 67.191.199.51 (talk) 06:38, 14 June 2012 (UTC) !!

I've removed the globalize tag, because just about every article on Wikipedia (all its versions) could have that tag applied, and it can't stay forever. If you have reliable sources discussing animal rights (stated or implied) -- preferably but not necessarily academic sources -- by all means add them to the article, or add them here and I'll happily look at them. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:37, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
I suspect that what the IPs were getting at, and it seems to be a perennial issue at this page, is that there are Eastern traditions, particularly, I think, associated with Buddhism, that argue against human exploitation of animals. It's not an unreasonable issue to point out. It may be that the secondary sources that discuss the Western concepts of animal rights focus, unsurprisingly, on Western concepts, but it might still be a good editorial decision for us to look also at Eastern-directed sources. It appears that they do exist: [5], [6]. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
The globalize tag was good. Not only esterns, african's, aboriginals have different views too. "The Wikipedia project suffers systemic bias that naturally grows from its contributors' demographic groups, manifesting in an imbalanced coverage of a subject, thereby discriminating against the less represented demographic groups."
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 05:23, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
I know that there are relevant non-Western views, particularly Jainism and ahimsa (I am hoping to add a subsection on Jainism to the philosophy section), but someone has to write them up based on high-quality sources, and the issues aren't easy to get right.
The page is about animal rights, and the ideas that led to that concept or thwarted it; it's not about animal treatment in general. SSZ, if there are (for example) aboriginal/First Nations ideas about animal rights, consider creating an article about them ("Animal rights in X"), and we can then summarize the article in a section here, per WP:SUMMARY-style. (Speaking of aboriginal views, I like the "who speaks for wolf?" idea that Mark Rowlands has talked about -- it's a virtue ethics approach about what kind of moral agents we want to be. We have to add a section on virtue ethics to this article at some point, so I was hoping to work that in.)
There is a "to do" list at Talk:Animal rights/to do, which appears at the top of the talk page, and which you could use to remind yourself about things you want to add/research. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:52, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
In general terms, I like the idea of a globalized view, one that is not Western-centric. But I also recognize that it's a subtle task to differentiate between material that is, properly, about animal rights, and material that is, instead, about concerns about the treatment of animals more generally. I think the well-established way to resolve that issue is to go by what secondary sources say. If they say some non-Western concept is about animal rights, then it's reasonable to include that concept here. We should also be careful about not restricting the choice of those secondary sources to those that focus on the animal rights movement as it exists in Western nations, but also consider those that are about animal rights in those other parts of the world. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
I agree. The scientific studies of treatment of animals indicate the level of support of animal rights in different parts of the world.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 23:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I see that an IP has put the tag back, and I think that this is reasonable. I'm going to oppose removal of the tag until there is more global content on the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

The IP that added the tag was SSZvH7N5n8 logged out. Tags are intended as a last resort (e.g. if someone kept trying to add well-sourced, well-written, on-topic material and was being prevented). But nothing like that has happened. It seems quite wrong for some Wikipedians to tag articles expecting other Wikipedians to do the work.
No one has ever added well-sourced material to this article that would "globalize" it, so the tag is likely to remain forever. The truth is that it would take a lot of research to produce an accurate account of animal rights outside the Western academic literature, because while there is a lot about moral approaches to animals elsewhere (I intend to develop the speciesism article by discussing speciesism and Buddhism, for example), there is very little about animal rights (the idea that we should stop using animals), and no theoretical development of the idea that I'm aware of. Qiu Renzong, for example, a Chinese bioethicist, recently argued for the introduction of animal rights to China, basing his arguments on Western arguments about speciesism, only to be told off for discussing "foreign trash."
So whoever added a non-Western perspective would have to make themselves familiar with a lot of primary and secondary sources to make sure what was added was not misleading. The chances of anyone doing that work are slim to zero.
I think anyone arguing in favour of the tag should first produce some academic sources (from any part of the world) that explain non-Western views of animal rights (with the stress on "animal rights"), so we can establish whether a resolution of the tag would be actionable within the policies. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:48, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

lets make things simple

1)SV said: "Tags are intended as a last resort" I ask reliable resource of this statement. 2)the article is not globalized, the tag is a factual statement. 3) me and Tryptofish oppose to remove it 4) I can point sources on those subjects, even main stream English source, if anyone is interested.5) SV please pay attention to Wikipedia policy WP:OWN as pointed out by Tryptofish SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:27, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
About: "The IP that added the tag was SSZvH7N5n8 logged out.", that may or may not be true, but it is completely beside the point. It's not like it doesn't count if it's particular editors who feel that way. The point is that there are editors who are concerned about the issue – including me! – and the issue hasn't been resolved yet. Reverting the tag is indeed bordering on OWN, and bordering on disruptive. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:45, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Concerns

SSZvH7N5n8, a new user, began editing this article on July 20, and has been restoring the edits – [7] [8] [9] [10] – despite objections. The material reflects some of the content of a film about human exceptionalism, The Superior Human? (2012). It violates (at least) UNDUE, SYN, and PRIMARY. There are also problems with the writing, in my view. That's not to say that everything SSZvH has suggested has been inappropriate (pointing out, for example, that the article didn't mention Darwin was very helpful).

To SSZvH7N5n8: the links above lead to Wikipedia's content policies. In summary, the article must reflect the focus (and roughly the weight of that focus) found in mainstream, academic, secondary sources on animal rights, whether for or against. That is, academics must make the connections we highlight – it can't only be Wikipedians who make those connections. That doesn't mean that every source must be an academic source, but there shouldn't be anything in the article that would make someone familiar with the academic literature raise an eyebrow.

Request for consensus

I'm therefore seeking consensus to restore SSZvH7N5n8's version of 03:38, 24 July 2012. This is the version that Tryptofish and I agreed on above, plus SSZvH7N5n8's addition of a screenshot of Richard Ryder, which the filmmakers have now released (diff between the current version and the version I'd like to restore).

The version I'd like to go back to:

  • includes a subsection on Darwin, based on secondary sources, in the history section, but without implying that he was an AR advocate;
  • excludes SSZvH's science section, which is based on primary sources, or inappropriate secondary sources;
  • excludes (now within the science section, previously in its own section) the material based on a PhD thesis (primary source, not independently published, not cited by mainstream sources, violation of UNDUE);
  • excludes the highlighting in the lead of Richard Ryder, PETA, and Richard Dawkins. That Dawkins is supportive of extending rights to certain nonhuman primates was correct as of 1993, but adding it to the second paragraph is out of place and arguably UNDUE; also, I'd like to find confirmation of his current views before referring to him anywhere in the article. PETA's views on euthanasia are unrelated to this article, and it jars to see those views in the lead. Similarly, there is no need to highlight in the lead that Ryder first thought of the term "speciesism," especially as it was Peter Singer who made it a well-known term. We already mention this in the appropriate sections of the article (the sections on the Oxford Group and the publication of Singer's Animal Liberation).

If there's consensus to revert to that version, I would then like us to discuss each of SSZvH7N5n8's proposed additions separately, so that it's easier to find reliable sources and determine what weight those sources give the material. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:49, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Response from SSZvH7N5n8

Comments moved from the middle of my post above. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:37, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

  • [Re: the image]: Untrue, The image was already release by the filmmakers when SlimVirgin purposely removed it. Every one can contact the film makers for verification. The removal is probably more todo with to SlimVirgin biased view of Richard Ryder, I will discuss this in the below paragraph.
  • [Re: the science section]: Untrue. Those are apparently secondary sources, they are peer reviewed materials. I ask everyone to verify their sources, instead of listening SlimVirgin's propaganda. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 21:17, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
  • [Re: the Phd thesis]: Untrue. citation by journal papers of the thesis can be found at bottom of the page : http://jmeng.goodeasy.info/publications/Reviews_OriginsOfAttitudesTowardsAnimals_JMeng2009.htm
Name of the journals includes: Animal Welfare (University Federation of Animal Welfare), Animals, British Food Journal, Springer. There were conference presentation/abstract too.
Search Google scholar for "animal rights international survey", choose range since 2008, an article wrote by the author ranking NO 1 last time I checked. The title is "Attitudes to animals in Eurasia: The identification of different types of animal protection through an international survey" .The article is based on the study the author primarily reported in the thesis. In fact, it is a "part" of the thesis SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 21:17, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
  • SlimVirgin said "there is no need to highlight in the lead that Ryder first thought of the term "speciesism,". I question SlimVirgin's familiarity ( or deliberately ignorance) with one of the most fundamental academic principles. That is the respect for originality (value true intellectual creations ). People created the ideas should be given major credit, that is why theories etc are often named after creators. Copying ideas are shameful. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 21:17, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
I'd appreciate if you could post your replies separately, rather than splitting other people's posts, because it makes it harder to see who wrote what. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:37, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Overall misleading description of the issue.
  • " a new user, began editing this article on July 20" I have registered the website for a very long time. If SlimVirgin try to imply my editing does not count equal weight when reliable sources is provided because I am not editing this article in the past. Then this is a violation of Wikipedia policy, NPOV and this is also not welcome new users. I'd also appreciate it if SlimVirgin would avoid personal attacks. see Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines.
  • "and has been restoring the edits" So does SlimVirgin. See recent article editing history for complete information
  • "despite objections" SlimVirgin did not tell you there were serious objection of removal of my editing . I quote the Obiwankenobi (previous name was KarlB) notes here. "these additions are perfectly reasonable", http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&oldid=503373581 "I disagree; I think the additions are fine; rather than reverting, the solution should be to improve wording or add additional sources; incremental is a fine approach. Also, I don't recall any wiki-rule anywhere that says things must be written in the way one editor prefers, or that they must use academic sources. Finally, a PhD thesis is a perfectly fine source; these are regularly quoted in the literature; PhD theses are published through their submission and approval, and are regularly catalogued by university libraries. If you can find a better source that is published that says essentially the same thing, that is even better, but if the best source is a PhD thesis I see no problem with it.--KarlB (talk) 01:48, 21 July 2012 (UTC) " from this page
  • SlimVirgin has hypocritical editing policies. She disprove my content of scientific theories and studies of animal rights, while arguing historical content should be remain on the page. KarlB suggested the removal of history from animal right in the past. I copied my past response to her here again. SlimVirgin said "it's(the article is) about human exceptionalism, not animal rights theory". I disagree with this statement. 1) why scientific theory of animal rights ( based on evolution and statistics) is not theory? Those are my editing; 2) Please provide Wikipedia policy that require the article to only include theories. Please explain why other things related to the topic are not allowed. 3) If SlimVirgin take 'animal rights theory' idea of the article seriously, I would like to ask her remove animal rights history from the page ASAP. As she said, it is not animal rights theory; the two are related, but they are not the same thing. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 05:56, 24 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSZvH7N5n8 (talk • contribs)

Responses

(no threaded replies in this section, please)

  • Support revert to SSZvH7N5n8's version of 03:38, 24 July 2012. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:49, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Support...Modernist (talk) 19:35, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Against As said above, I also ask every pay attention to SlimVirgin's statements. Please independent verify every piece of information she said. Interestingly, I noticed that Modernist come out every time that SlimVirgin decide to have some formal moves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSZvH7N5n8 (talk • contribs)
  • Against full revert; support partial revert with caveats. I generally support SSZvH's attempts to bring a bit more balance to the article, and the science section should definitely be retained, and hopefully developed further. Secondary sources are preferred, and while I am personally against citing phd theses the RS guidelines as they currently stand do permit them, regardless of whether they are independently published (which very few are). Empirical animal rights studies should definitely be included as per WP:NPOV, especially if we are going to include the role of the feminist movement in AR advocacy (frankly I find it strange that the article would include a section on feminism which is arguably WP:FRINGE to the AR movement, and not scientific research and studies into people's beliefs and attitudes). The Dawkins statement should be removed though from the section because it attributes a viewpoint, it does not outline research! I support reverting the changes to the lede; too much emphasis is now being placed on certain opinions. However, criticism of PETA's euphanasia policy should certainly be kept in the article, and personally I don't think the article adequately covers the dissent within AR advocacy, and not covering PETA's controversial euphanasia policy in the article would be an ommission that contravenes WP:NPOV in my view, since it pretty much devides the AR community. So to summarise: a partial revert that retains the scientific studies section, and moves the PETA criticism out of the lede (possibly to the critics section). Betty Logan (talk) 22:08, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Don't revert everything, but revert a lot of it. I think we should be looking at keeping what is useful and discarding what isn't, so it isn't really a question of a complete revert. I need to explain at length what I mean by that, so I'll do that below. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Further comments

  • Betty Logan, you wrote above: "I generally support SSZvH's attempts to bring a bit more balance to the article ..." Could you say what you mean by "balance"? SSZvH's edits take the article in the direction of animal rights advocacy, rather than education about the idea. I know there is a fine line between the two, but I've been trying to stay on the right side of it by sticking to mainstream academic sources.

    The proposed science section is based in part on an unpublished/self-published PhD thesis from 2009 that is not mentioned in the academic literature, and is not really about animal rights (read it here). It is used in the article to say that "human concern for animal rights may be an evolutionary trait," the meaning of which is unclear and isn't explained. (If animal rights is an evolutionary trait, it's one we've found mysteriously easy to resist.) Also, I can't find the words "evolutionary trait" in that text. In addition, it's a primary source (the survey as a source for the survey, rather than a secondary source writing about it) being used in a way that's arguably interpretive, a violation of WP:PRIMARY. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:47, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

It is not a primary source. See wikipedia definition. 'can't find the words "evolutionary trait"' Why not search evolution? SlimVirgin said "PhD thesis from 2009 that is not mentioned in the academic literature" There is fundermental difference between SlimVirgin does not know how to locate scientific literature and The work "is not mentioned in the academic literature" . I already provided a list of scientific literature that mentioned the work. It's unfortunate that SlimVirgin continuously uses untrue statements to influence the vote. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 00:45, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
It is a primary source: the study itself is being used as a source for the study, rather than using a secondary source that has been written about the study. We are supposed to do the latter on WP, especially if requested.
I searched for "evolution" and found only this. It does not say or imply that "human concern for animal rights may be an evolutionary trait." SlimVirgin (talk) 23:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

"the study itself is being used as a source for the study, rather than using a secondary source that has been written about the study." This is not the wikipedia articles say. And Can you please read the whole book then comment. The section title you linked was 'The origins of Positive Attitudes' And other parts of the book demonstrate animal rights are one types of positive attitudes to animals.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 23:18, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Can you give me a page number, or page range, for "human concern for animal rights may be an evolutionary trait" (stated or implied). You added pp. 263-267 to the article, but I can't find it there. I would like to read the pages you've based this on. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:28, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
If you are looking for content of conclusion sections, I think you can download the full conclusions on the JM animal rights index page. There are also other full book links: http://jmeng.goodeasy.info/AnimalWelfareIndexAnimalRightsIndex/ SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 23:34, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm looking for a book or paper that uses that survey as a source; that is, a secondary source.
Also, I have to ask you again to stop making personal attacks, particularly in edit summaries. Just because we disagree does not mean that either one of us is being deliberately misleading. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:26, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I ask you again, stop using untrue statement or misleading. I did not put in the edit comment that you "being deliberately misleading". What I put was factual statement which I supplied evidences. If you do not want to see me describe your acts. Stop committing the acts. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
First of all what I edit is not for you to complain about! Secondly - what language are you typing in? It isn't correct English and if you want credibility perhaps you should try correcting your atrocious English...Modernist (talk) 02:01, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I reverted your initial nonsense about NIetsche and I asked you to develop consensus before wrecking an otherwise decently formatted article, and Fwiw in my opinion SV's request for consensus made perfect sense in the light of your somewhat insistent changes...Modernist (talk) 02:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
Modernist 1) you typed Nietzsche wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AAnimal_rights&diff=504047876&oldid=504046225, is this correct English? My major concerns are facts and science on the talk page 2)I will spend more time about Nietzsche's animal views. The edit was based on good sources, I said will add more. 3) You are misleading, the editing you reverted is much more than Nietzsche. see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&diff=503372981&oldid=503365512 Did you know what you reverted at all? 4) I did not say SV's request for consensus does not make sense. I welcome the debate. However I will not tolerate dishonesty in the discussion. 5) Modernist came out to talk again, when SV seemed to be in trouble with the arguments.

For the records. Modernist removed my above comment without any explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Animal_rights&oldid=504054036

You moved my edits without permission or edit summary and for the record as the link shows I corrected the spelling of NIetzsche a few minutes later. For what it's worth...Modernist (talk) 03:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
"no threaded replies in this section, please" Did you see the text above vote section? I did not place the textSSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:51, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Further comments, section break

There's enough complexity to these issues that I feel that I need to comment at some length.

  • About the Ryder image: I looked at the source website, and it seems to me to satisfy our image file licensing requirements. (For what little it's worth, I wrote WP:AAFFD.) If anyone feels the file is not properly licensed, the place to discuss it is WP:FFD, not here. I oppose having it in the lead, per WP:UNDUE, but I'm fine with it where it is now.
  • About Ryder in the lead section: I'm neutral. (Question: is there some uncertainty about the sourcing as to whether he actually coined the term "speciesism"? It kind of sounds that way from some of the edits I've seen, but maybe I misunderstood.)
  • About Dawkins in the lead section: I'd lean towards deleting him from the lead section. He really isn't that prominent as an animal rights person, so it's UNDUE to show him so prominently. The fact that he is a scientist doesn't really make him a scientific analyst of animal rights.
  • About criticisms of PETA: I'm fully in favor of the criticism of the ALF being retained, but the criticism of PETA, here, seems off the point. They aren't being criticized for their animal rights views, but for, in effect, not being strong enough proponents of animal rights (because they euthanize). I think the lead should only describe criticisms of the animal rights point of view, not criticisms of animal rights people who aren't sufficiently consistent in their views.
  • About the Darwin section: I've lost track of all the edits there, but what's on the page now is heading in the right direction. Attributing the analysis to James Rachels allows us to base it on an academic secondary source, and that's good. But the last sentence, about Cobbe et al. seeing Darwin as not being an ally, raises a red flag for me. Does Rachels really consider Darwin to have been an animal rights thinker, or something more like an animal welfare or other protectionist thinker?
  • About the "scientific studies" section: Right now, it's a mix of useful and not-useful material.
    • Dawkins' opinion is the opinion of a scientist, rather than the results of a scientific study, so I don't think it belongs there. Perhaps it could be pointed out somewhere in the 20th or 21st century accounts.
    • There has been a history of people trying to add the Meng source, and in some cases the user name has suggested that there may have been a WP:COI (properly understood) in trying to draw attention to her work, so I'm kind of skeptical of including the sentence attributed to her thesis. A PhD thesis satisfies WP:V, but it may fail WP:UNDUE. I don't see the point of saying simply that there are "scientific methods... for quantifying attitudes about animal rights". Unless it's become a major scientific method, widely used (and it hasn't!), I'd rather leave that out, and just report survey findings.
    • I do think it is useful to add to the page studies that relate evolved human behavioral traits to receptivity to animal rights, and I'd be inclined to keep that material.
    • The second paragraph, about the views of people who like/dislike evolution towards animal rights, seems connected to the rest only by a tenuous link to evolution. It might fit with some discussion of public views of the animal rights movement, but it seems out of place here.
    • The last paragraph, about diversity of views within the animal rights movement, is useful information, maybe to be added to an earlier section, maybe the one about the founding of the ALF, but it also is out of place as a "scientific study". It's just some polls.
  • About the discussion here: there's a need to lower the temperature, and be more collaborative, less confrontational.
    • SlimVirgin, it's irrelevant that SSZvH7N5n8 is a new editor, so there's no need to draw attention to it. There's no need to see these issues in terms of reverting what they did; just treat it as points about content to be discussed one by one. I can understand that you would be annoyed that they inserted replies within your comments, but don't forget that that's exactly what you did to me when I first came to this page.
    • SSZvH7N5n8, you are misusing the term "COI". Please understand that most of what is being said to you is being said in good faith. There are good reasons to insist on Wikipedia's sourcing policies. Please read those policies thoughtfully, and take those policies seriously. Please feel free to ask me at my talk page about those policies, if you need some advice.
  • None of this is personal. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:18, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

SSZvH7N5n8 , further comments

  • Tryptofish, inserting comments after the paragraph is the convention of academic responses in my university. Because it is easy to see what the response is about. I am sorry if anyone does not like it. In fact I would like recommend Wikipedia community consider this convention. In my opinions, it's better organized in many situations.
  • I do not accept that sourcing is a problem. As I already demonstrated, everything I mentioned are based on peer reviewed academic materials. Also I most use high ranking materials in Google. Please be reminded. I am scientist, proper sourcing is part of my profession. Please also be reminded, my editing is in good faith. Unfortunately this efforts was not properly recognized. The indiscriminate reverting of my edits led me to speculate the COI of some editors. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 08:09, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
  • For the study of human behaviour and mind, polls (surveys) are major scientific method. I make it simple for people here, to qualify a scientific study, the study should draw conclusions based on the analysis of many of numbers. One of major tasks of surveys are statistical analysis (analysis of numbers). See survey "Statistical survey, a method for collecting quantitative information about items in a population". They are important because they do not limit to a few individuals' opinions, therefore, are more comprehensive and neutral source of information. To put it another way. The older version of the article (before I start to work on it ) mainly listed some academic or activist views. Please provide evidence that the general public really care or support those opinions. Current world population is: 7.029 billion (this does not include past populations). The older version of the article heavily featured individual's opinions. Number of individuals mentioned in the older version of the article, is probably under 50 (are alive or have lived). How representative and neutral is the article? NPOV is one of the most important policy of Wikipedia.
  • I am not sure what Tryptofish mean by COI. My point was Wikipedia policy indicate clearly, statistics are good source of information. Statistics in the field of animal rights are often obtained from surveys. Those are content I added into the article. Wikipedia COI policy: "State facts and statistics" see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Plain_and_simple_conflict_of_interest_guide . To WP:UNDUE, those study I added all ranked high in the search results of Google or Google scholar. I am not aware there are other competing study that do the same thing. But if there are any, I am happy to include them. As Betty Logan said, the science section should be expended. It should not be reduced. Current information is far from enough despite of large amount of existing literature. I am aware at least four journals for the topic, see Anthrozoology. The lack of scientific studies of this article itself is a major WP:UNDUE. I was going to add more relevant studies in the science section. I added a to do list below.
  • Ryder's creation of the speciesism is well established in my opinion. Other Wikipedia articles have the information. See Speciesism Richard D. Ryder . If leading section features his work, speciesism, then his name should be mentioned too.
  • I overall disagree to using popularity in general public or knowledge of people outside the field measure the quality of an academic study. Several comments above have implied that. Many good academic work are not very well know by people outside the field. Richard Ryder is one example. This is what I am working on, improve the academic quality of the article.
  • For the very same reason Richard Dawkins as an example of scientist, who support some form of animal rights, should be remain in the leading section. I agree to improve the writing , make it more relevant to the context. But if something like that is not in the leading section, the article is biased against science from the very beginning. I want see science there. I provided names of other scientists below in case Dawkins is not considered suitable: Jane Goodall and Gill Langley. Ideally, I think those three scientists should all be included in the leading section if we want to adjust the bias towards the arts. Not only philosophers and politicians care about animal rights.
  • To AFL and PETA criticism, It's wrong to assume, some ALF's activitis are consistent with animal rights while PETA's euthanasia is not. Many animal rights groups/people oppose violence, they think some so-called AFL's activities are violence and are not consistent with animal rights. Scientific speaking, animal rights include human (one group of animals) rights. As a matter of fact PETA's own statement show they believe what they do is very consistent with animal rights. http://www.peta.org/about/why-peta/euthanasia.aspx The page title is "Animal Rights Uncompromised: Euthanasia". I also saw AFL website states they are against violence to humans. Text from Animal Liberation Front : 'Activists say the movement is non-violent. According to the ALF's code, any act that furthers the cause of animal liberation, where all reasonable precautions are taken not to harm human or non-human life, may be claimed as an ALF action. American activist Rod Coronado said in 2006: "One thing that I know that separates us from the people we are constantly accused of being—that is, terrorists, violent criminals—is the fact that we have harmed no one"' ; "To reveal the horror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked doors, by performing nonviolent direct actions and liberation". A few members behaviours are not necessary represent the group. official statements matters. PETA officially endorsed euthanasia, but AFL does not formally endorse violence to humans and non-human animals as far as I am aware. In sumary, all editors should be aware that there are different definitions of animal rights. I see no reason to treat AFL and PETA differently here, they should be both moved out or remained in the leading section.


  • I agree with Tryptofish, None of this is personal.

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:59, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm really sorry, SSZvH7N5n8, but much of what you have said here seems to me to be incoherent. It doesn't matter in the least if you are a scientist. Your responsibility here is to make a convincing argument on the merits, based on good editing. Someone being a scientist doesn't make them more worthy of being listened to. Anyone can edit Wikipedia. Those who make the most cogent arguments guide the consensus, not those with supposed credentials.
As for consensus, it would be a pity if that were to come to an impasse amid a wall of text. In my comments in the sub-section just above, I tried to establish a compromise between what SSZvH7N5n8 and SlimVirgin have each suggested. If other editors think that that, or something like it, makes sense, then I propose that we go that way, and move on. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:34, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Credential does not matter, I totally agree to it. Therefore I put clear arguments for readers without assumed knowledge of the field. All arguments are presented along with verifiable sources. I even did a basic tutorial of what is scientific study above in case someone is not familiar with it. Although I think it is taught in elementary school. It's annoying that some people tried to "teach" you common sense of a scientist such as sourcing. I mention I am a scientist above only for that.
  • Only a small number of people have participated the debate. Its too soon to talk about consensus in my opinions. I raised a lot more new issues/arguments in the further comments section. Only one person has posted comment after that and the comment did not really respond the issues.
  • Talking about compromise. I have much more concerns of the qualify of the article than those I have edited. My positions have never been changed. The article, even the current version, has significant bias against science. The reason I only made a few changes is because I compromised. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:45, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
Instead of trying to tackle all issues at once, why don't you just focus on one particular aspect for now, namely the scientific studies section? That is where you perceive the greatest imbalance to lie, and that seems to be the area where you are gaining the most support for your edits. Betty Logan (talk) 06:02, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
I never try to tackle all issues at once. That's why I only did very little changes of the article judging by the length of my editing. I see the leading also have great imbalance. I welcome discussions of specific issues of my editing/comments. For example people can tell me "I think this pieces of information in the sentence you added is not accurate, the word should be changed to ... according to this scientific literature in this journal ..." It's a wast of time that some people tried to disapprove my editing/comments in general while they cannot/did not provide RELIABLE SOURCE to justify their own positions. For example, if one think scientific approach should not be featured in the leading section, please provide source suggests scientific approach of animal rights does not exist or is insignificant. Let's be constructive. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 09:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

To to list of the science section

1)Statistics of of animal abuses/uses in different parts of the world, this present the state of animal rights in the world.
2) more surveys of different group's opinions of animal rights issues.
3) neurological study of inter-species compassion. There are major studies on this, see Mirror neuron.
4) evolutionary study of altruist behaviours in humans. Altruist behaviours are not all about humans. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism#Evolutionary_explanations
5) other great apes , humans' closest living relatives, and their similarity with humans. see Great ape personhood
I can add more. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 09:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
Please let me point something out. A lot of the difference in opinion that I have observed here can actually be traced to where the proposed content is proposed to go. In other words, I can happily support adding a lot of this material to Wikipedia, but in some cases it makes better sense to locate it in places other than the "science" section of this article. In some cases, that means other sections of this animal rights page; in other cases, that means other articles instead of this one. For one example, looking at your bullet point number 1, statistics about animal abuse in different parts of the world really belong in the article about Cruelty to animals, whereas the animal rights article is really about the ideas. That doesn't mean, then, that the information shouldn't be added to Wikipedia. It's simply a question of where it should go. For another example, it seems to me that your bullet points numbers 3, 4, and 5, do indeed fit together quite logically, and I like the idea of covering that on this page. I also think that your bullet point number 2 is relevant to this page (so long as the survey data are specifically about animal rights, and not about animal welfare or other, broader concepts). However, point 2 is really a different part of the subject than are points 3, 4, and 5. Therefore, I would imagine a subsection of this page about scientific studies of human-nonhuman interactions, comprising points 3, 4, and 5 – but a different subsection, with a different header title, about polling data on people's views concerning the animal rights movement, comprising point 2. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:38, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Summing up

The question was whether to restore SSZvH7N5n's version of 03:38, 24 July 2012, i.e. to remove the changes made since then.

  • There is consensus to restore the lead (Modernist, Betty Logan, myself, and Tryptofish, except that T is neutral regarding Ryder's thinking of the term "speciesism" -- but offering the origins of all the terms ("animal rights," "animal liberation," "speciesism," "protectionism," etc) is too much detail for the lead. We deal with those issues, insofar as the origins are known, in the relevant sections.
  • There is consensus to remove the PhD source material from the science section (Modernist, Tryptofish, and myself).
  • There is consensus to remove Dawkins from the science section (Modernist, Betty Logan, Tryptofish, and myself).

So I will go ahead and do those things. Someone mentioned the image of Ryder: it's not an issue now. The first was a copyright violation because unreleased. When this was pointed out, the filmmakers released it, and a second was uploaded. However, because it's a screenshot it's not brilliant quality, so I'd like at some point to replace it, but there's no rush. I'll also move it into the section about the Oxford Group and change the caption.

Finally, after this discussion started, SSZvH7N5n8 added Francione's 1995 book to the infobox. I don't mind retaining that, because it was one of the "firsts": in this case, the first jurisprudential treatment of AR. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:32, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

What to do with the science section

Apologies for the length of this, but there are long responses above, which unfortunately means another long one. I suggest from now on that we try to deal with SSZvH7N5n8's points individually.

As for what is left of the science section, I didn't understand what people wanted. If we remove Dawkins, the PhD source, and the second paragraph (Modernist, Tryptofish and myself), we are left with this:

A survey in 2007 found that proponents of evolution, who tend to view species as interconnected, advocate animal rights more so than creationists and believers of intelligent design theory.[1]

Earlier studies have established links between interpersonal violence and animal cruelty.[2][3] Two surveys found that attitudes towards animal rights issues such as direct action are very diverse within the animal rights communities. Near half (50%, 39% in two surveys) activists do not support direct action. One survey concluded "it would be a mistake to portray animal rights activists as homogeneous".[4]

  1. ^ Support for Animal Rights as a Function of Belief in Evolution, Religious Fundamentalism, and Religious Denomination. http://www.animalsandsociety.org/assets/library/745_s3.pdf
  2. ^ Frank R. Ascione, Phil Arkow Child abuse, domestic violence, and animal abuse: linking the circles of compassion for prevention and intervention ISBN 1-55753-142-0
  3. ^ Randall Lockwood, Frank R. Ascione. Cruelty to Animals and Interpersonal Violence. Purdue University Press 1998
  4. ^ Signal & Taylor (2006). Attitudes to animal and empathy: comparing animal protection and general community samples. Anthrozoos. 20(2), 125-130.
    • An attitude survey of animal rights activists. Psychological Science. 2(3),194-196

Tryptofish wanted to keep the "studies that relate evolved human behavioral traits to receptivity to animal rights." I don't know what that refers to. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:46, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Appropriate sources

Three points to bear in mind:

1. It's important when writing about science (or anything else) on WP to use secondary sources, review articles, etc, and not to rely on Wikipedians choosing which primary sources to use and how to interpret them. That is, a study can't be used as a sole source to justify the inclusion of that study. See Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources.
2. The article should, for the most part, be based on and framed by current academic secondary sources – that is, books and papers written by academics with jobs in universities or equivalent, who are writing about animal rights, for or against; and/or material published by university presses. This means that we write about what they write about, and in the way they write about it. We can also use the primary sources those academics rely on, e.g. for historical issues. The reason we rely on academic sources here is that it's an academic subject, and an increasingly popular one, with plenty of sources available for and against each position, and for and against all positions. So there is no need to look for sources outside the scholarly debate. High-quality news sources are fine for the recent developments section, but these too should be replaced by academic sources when the latter catch up; that way, we know we are dealing with developments that the scholarly sources believe are worth mentioning.
3. The article is about the concept of animal rights (the view that humans beings should stop using animals, entirely or almost entirely), and how it developed. It's not about animal cruelty, animal welfare, empathy, activism, attitudes to animals in general, etc. Source material about these related issues can be included when they are found relevant by academics writing about animal rights, but they can't be included just because a Wikipedian finds them relevant (see WP:NOR).

So, for example (and this goes back to point 1 above), we can write: "Bernard Rollin argues that recent studies in the field of animal cognition strengthen the view that ...," or "Bernard Rollin cites recent studies suggesting that ...," then we can cite those studies. But we should not write: "Recent studies in the field of animal cognition suggest that ..." SlimVirgin (talk) 18:47, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Looking ahead

Looking ahead, I agree with SSZvH7N5n8 that a science section is a good idea; I would also like to write a legal section. But everything has to be on-topic and well-sourced. I also agree that Dawkins should be included somewhere – when we know what his current views are – and I think we should discuss the idea of the discontinuous mind. But I'd like to suggest that SSZvH7N5n8 work on a science section on a user subpage to start with, and that he also consider creating it as a separate article, because it's a big subject. We could then create a section here based on that article, summary-style. And if it's significant enough, we could include something about that section in the lead.

SSZvH7N5n8 seems to have gained the impression that there is resistance in principle to adding scientific support for animal rights to the article or lead, but there really isn't. It's just that it has to be on-topic, accurate, and carefully sourced. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:47, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Clarifying some things

Admittedly, we have a wall of text, and it's hard to follow. But I'd like to clarify a few things.

  • Per what I said at #To to list of the science section, I want whatever we keep to be in the right place, and under an accurate header. Thus, survey results aren't really "scientific studies of animal rights" so much as opinion polls of the public. (Yes, I know pollsters consider polling to be very scientific, yada, yada.) That's why I changed the section header.
  • I think there's some miscommunication about what's what in the "science" section. I gave my personal opinions in #Further comments, section break, above, including which paragraphs to keep, and which to toss. Here's a permalink to the previous version of the "science" section, from when I made that comment: [11]. In my talk comments, I advocated (1) removing (from that section, at least) the first paragraph, about Dawkins; (2) combining the second and fourth paragraphs (note: not deleting the second paragraph!) into something about polls of opinion; (3) deleting the first sentence of the third paragraph, sourced to the PhD thesis; and (4) doing something with what would remain of the third paragraph.
  • At the time I write this, SlimVirgin has done (1), (2), and (3), and I agree with that, with the caveats that we actually didn't delete the second paragraph, and that I re-titled the section.
  • SlimVirgin asked in #What to do with the science section what I meant about "studies that relate evolved human behavioral traits to receptivity to animal rights." Sorry that was confusing. Here's the answer. If you look at what's left from the third paragraph in that permalink, after deleting the PhD thesis, it's this:

These studies suggest that human concern for animal rights may be an evolutionary trait, and that compassion for animals is correlated with compassion for other humans.[89][90] Earlier studies have established links between interpersonal violence and animal cruelty.[91][92]

  • That's what I was referring to. I agree, however, with what SlimVirgin says about appropriate and inappropriate sourcing, and about focusing on animal rights as opposed to human views of animals more generally. Thus, I am not arguing in favor of those two sentences verbatim. Instead, I'm AGFing that SSZvH7N5n8 will be able to come forward with sourcing that conforms to what both SlimVirgin and I agree on, for a future edit. And that is what I would see as "scientific studies". --Tryptofish (talk) 21:14, 28 July 2012 (UTC)


It occurs to me that the dolphin studies that are already on the page, in the 21st century section, are one example of something that actually does fit with a "scientific studies" section. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:41, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

COI in moderating debates

I have a question. Which wikipedia policy allows the person who started/heavily involved a vote closing it at the time he/she think that is appropriate? This is a major COI. The debates should be closed by someone not so involved in the topic.

SlimVirgin started the debate with an attempt of removing my editing, now she also closed it. Naturally she would want to close the debate at the time that is advantageous for her arguments. Only 5 people voted and voters opinions are changing, judging by the talk. Why the debate should be closed now? Many problems are unresolved. SlimVirgin should not moderate the debate. See Conflict of interest SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 05:48, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Let me try to explain things this way. The Wikipedia policy on COI is given at WP:COI. I don't think that having previously edited a page constitutes a COI for purposes of Wikipedia policy, so we shouldn't use term "COI" incorrectly. There is a related concept at WP:INVOLVED, but SlimVirgin has never used her administrative tools in this discussion. There may, perhaps, be potential issues pertaining, instead, to WP:OWN, although I honestly am not seeing any serious problems in this regard. Wikipedia resolves these things through WP:Consensus. It's true that SlimVirgin claimed to be reading consensus in her comments above, but then again, that did nothing to stop me from raising some issues in the discussion thread directly after hers, and we are all, of course, free to continue discussion and to continue to disagree, as you are doing here. At the same time, everyone really has a responsibility at least to try to find compromise where it is possible, instead of just sticking endlessly to one's original position. I'd encourage SSZvH7N5n8 to read WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT thoughtfully and with an open mind. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:35, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Dear Tryptofish, Thanks for the links. I compromise on many things. For example, I would let the article go the way most people like. However I will not compromise my own scientific standards. Please respect my freedom of speech. Majority opinion is not necessarily true. If one want to change my opinions, show me good studies. Bureaucracy or politics does not work in this regard. To all, please watch this video of Richard Dawkins, then judge if he should be included in the leading section. If you search speciesism in Youtube, it's on the first page. "Dawkins on speciesism and saving the gorilla" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQv19SWl_SA SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 15:19, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for those comments. And I'm very sure that no one is trying to interfere with anyone else's freedom of speech! There's a difference between preventing you from being heard (not happening), and not being persuaded by your arguments (has happened, in some cases).
I've watched the video, and I agree with you that it is very compelling. Dawkins clearly expresses a view that is specifically an animal rights view, in that he endorses certain legal equivalences between humans and other primates. He derives the view – in part! – from considerations that derive from Darwin's thinking, and that, indeed, is a line of thought that this page would do well to present more comprehensively.
But two points. First, Dawkins says very explicitly and at some length (near 3:30) that his argument is not a scientific one, but one based primarily on emotion. Therefore, it would misrepresent the source material for us to label it as a "scientific study" or a "scientific argument". Second, you keep making the case that the material needs to be in the lead, rather than in the main text of the page. But the video shows us nothing of the impact of Dawkins' arguments on the rest of the animal rights history of thought over time. It's not enough to put him in the lead because his statements are moving or articulate, nor is it enough because he happens to be a scientist by training. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
1)Emotions are science, emotions come from evolutions, see Evolution of emotion. Dawkins's position naturally come from his understanding of evolution continuity, as he said in the video, we are African apes. 2)Dawkins's academic status and his involving with animal rights project, such as great ape project justifies the inclusion.
You misunderstood Dawkins, he was talking about the limits of (current) scientific methods. It's common misunderstanding that emotions is contrast to science. The two can be unified through the understanding of evolution. Being emotional is our evolutionary function which give people the ideas of wrong and right. This Wikipedia article is also related: Evolution of morality . Dawkins also had a documentary, Nice Guys Finish First, you can watch it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6rgWzYRXiI It explains why being nice is human nature. This documentary is the correct interpretation of his book The Selfish Gene. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 04:36, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I didn't misunderstand a thing. Dawkins says, in his own words, that his argument is not a scientific one. For you to argue otherwise, that what Dawkins himself said, in his own words, does not count, because you claim to know that emotions have a scientific basis, is WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, and it doesn't belong here. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:49, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
Dear Tryptofish, I think we both can understand people should not judge a scientist views solely by some sentences he said in an interview. Picking a sentence out of a context, it could mean very different things. We talk casually from time to time, but writing is different. I recommend you read some writings of Dawkins, such as The Extended Phenotype(1982). The book has Dawkins' views of emotional evolution. I also provided you a documentary, Nice Guys Finish First. My intention is drawing people's attention to scientific approaches, of animal rights, which was missing from the article. I provided name of three scientists in totally. And I think they are relevant to the topics.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 16:26, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Editing the lead

SSZvH7N5n8, could I ask you again to discuss any substantive changes to the lead here on talk first? The current lead has consensus, both from this most recent discussion, and from a previous one (thinking now in particular about the second paragraph), where Bilby, who has an academic background in this area, was very helpful in suggesting how to approach it, and agreed with the end result. [12]

The changes you made to it [13] removed the two key names, and left it reading oddly. This is the lead section of the parent article of the animal rights pages on Wikipedia, so the writing has to be reasonably clear. That doesn't mean it's written in stone, but please suggest changes here so that we can consider your arguments.

Also, "animal rights" and "animal liberation" are used interchangeably on Wikipedia and throughout most of the academic literature. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:46, 29 July 2012 (UTC)


I don't think what SV do here, reverting my editing again, follow Wikipedia policies, in particular WP:OWN. I provided sources for the editing in the editing history. She is trying to impose her personal opinions on the article SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:27, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 07:43, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Globalize tag

As SSZvH7N5n8 has added the tag again, [14] [15] I'd like to request evidence here that it's justified, in the form of mainstream academic sources, from any country, that discuss the theory or practice of animal rights (as opposed to animal welfare) from a non-Western perspective. I'm not thinking of sources for the Moral status of animals in the ancient world article, or for the section in this article that summarizes it, but for the more recent development of the concept of animal rights and what it has led to, in terms of current theory, laws, or attitudes.

We need to see that the sources exist, both to know what to write, and also to make sure that we're not forced to violate UNDUE simply to remove the tag. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:49, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

the comments above suggest the lack of globalized view of animal rights. Why it has to be "the more recent development of the concept of animal rights "? "recent development" of animal rights only make sense to some cultural groups , for example those have already covered by the article. There are always vegetarians in different part of the world because of Hinduism(one billion followers, called the oldest living major religion),Buddhism (350million - 1.6 billion followers, founded since 6th - 4th centuries BCE.) etc. India and Buddhist nation Bhutan are still one of the lowest in the world in terms of per capital consumption of meat. see UN FAO database http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/countrystat/en/. These people are always doing animal rights. There are many other religious/native views forbidden/discourage meat eating and killing . I recommend everyone watch Philip Wollen's recent speech. The view point in the speech is globalized. http://freefromharm.org/videos/educational-inspiring-talks/philip-wollen-australian-philanthropist-former-vp-of-citibank-makes-blazing-animal-rights-speech/ Philip Wollen : Animals Should Be Off The Menu debate . Many resource of other cultural groups already exists in other Wikipedia articles. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 06:36, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
SV said ""animal rights" and "animal liberation" are used interchangeably on Wikipedia and throughout most of the academic literature. " I request reliable source for this statement. Not synthesis or original research please. See Wikipedia:SYNTH and Wikipedia:NOR SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 07:43, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned that this issue is going to be lost in a list of individual countries. However, I generally agree with SimVirgin here, in the focus of this article has bene on the debate that has been termed the "animal rights movement", as opposed to religious views of animals, or the global treatment of animals. There may well be cause for articles on all three subjects, but one article can't really encompass all three on its own. There may be cause to look at international persectives on the animal rights debate, and personally I think that might be valuable, but views outside of that debate might not fit in well here. - Bilby (talk) 08:38, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
"has been termed the "animal rights movement"" then what we should do is rename/redirect the tile to animal rights movement. Because it is not animal rights any more. Animal rights movement is not what I am talking about here. If too much information is a concern, what should done is create new articles for the parts, then summarize the content in the main AR article. For example move history to a separate article. :) SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 10:07, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
You're right - I worded that badly by tying it to a movement. But it is about a particular debate, known as "animal rights", which is located in a particular space and relates to a ethical and political discussion and certain views towards animals. Thus it is separate from the general treatment of animals, animal welfare, or religious views of animals, all of which may have a degree of relevance to animal rights, but none of whe are the same thing. Thus I agree with SlimVirgin's request for sources directly related animal rights from a non-Western perspective. - Bilby (talk) 10:27, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
'it is about a particular debate, known as "animal rights"' Please provide reliable source for this statement, to support that Wikipedia article on animal rights has to be like that, no original research please. :) I think the article you are talking about should be called "Animal rights debate/theories". It is not animal rights. :) SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 11:30, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
  • There are a couple of issues here:
    • Edit warring: Whatever the merits based on content, there needs to be a stop of mutual reverting – removing the tag, adding it back, removing it again. There is no consensus on this talk page, and the tag needs to stay until the issue has been resolved one way or another. Don't anyone think that I won't take this to DR, because I will!
    • Content: Bilby, as usual, raises a thoughtful point. It's true that we shouldn't simply have animal welfare and other non-animal-rights issues conflated here. But, as always on Wikipedia, there's a solution to the problem: sources. I've already said this recently on this talk page, but I guess I have to say it again. There are plenty of sources, secondary academic sources, that, themselves, use the phrase "animal rights" in conjunction with non-Western lines of thought. I've linked to them before, go take a look. If the reliable sources say it's "animal rights", then it's animal rights. And we shouldn't fall into the self-fulfilling prophecy of only considering sources that focus on the movement in the West.
  • --Tryptofish (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
I got lost in the comments above, so I probably missed that. :) I have no problem with adding non-Western accounts of animal rights, and I'll see if I can find anything to add to your sources. I do think we need to keep a distinction between the different issues, though, including different views of animals that don't come under the general "animal rights" term. - Bilby (talk) 15:08, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
Oh, that's fine. I was more, um, irritable towards other editors, not you. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:10, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
That's cool. :) I just wanted to respond so I could offer to help look. I'm having such a great time reading up on the impact virtue ethics has had in the field, that I'd love to start digging for non-western perspectives, just to have an excuse to expand the reading. - Bilby (talk) 15:16, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Request for sources

Apologies for starting another section, but I'm hoping to avoid the source requests and responses getting lost in debate.

We need academic sources to be provided here on talk so that we can determine whether there are reliable sources on the idea of animal rights in non-Western areas. We also need the sources to provide a framework for our coverage, and an explanation of why we would focus on those areas in particular -- i.e. whether there is anything different about the idea of animal rights there, or anything different about the way the concept emerged. Otherwise it raises the question of why we are mentioning any given country/tradition, and not some other.

Template:Globalize says:

"This tag should only be applied to articles where global perspectives are reasonably believed to exist (e.g., that people in China have a different view about an idea or situation than people in Germany or South Africa)."
"If additional reliable sources for a worldwide view cannot be found after a reasonable search, this tag may be removed."

I'm hoping we can simply list the sources here so they don't get lost, and then debate how to use them in another sub-section. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

China
  • "Animal rights is a foreign concept introduced into mainland China in the 1990s. In 1993, Yang Tongjin, a researcher at China's Academy of Sciences, published an introductory article on western ideas of animal rights and animal liberation. This was arguably the first article giving a comprehensive account of the origin, arguments and counter-arguments of the western intellectual explorations of these issues. The article did not, however, spark a continuing interest in the topic. ... Since the mid-1990s, however, ideas of animal rights and animal liberation have attracted more interest."
  • He goes on to discuss how Peter Singer's book was translated, how Qiu Renzong has tried to argue that China should adopt these ideas, and how the opposition relies on the same arguments as philosophers in the West, e.g. animals cannot have rights because they have no obligations.

SlimVirgin (talk) 16:35, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

India
  • Paul Waldau (2011). Animal Rights: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press, p. 184. Waldau is an ethicist at Canisius College, Buffalo, New York
  • He writes briefly about Maneka Gandhi, and how she founded People for Animals (which Waldau identifies as an animal rights organization), and Raj Panjwani, author of Animal Laws of India, and founder of the Environment and Animal Legal Defense Fund. He also mentions a 2000 legal decision in India that referred to "rights" and which I will now add to the developments section of the article (done).

SlimVirgin (talk) 17:03, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Polls are scientific studies

I am really sorry some people still cannot understand that polls are scientific studies. Although I provided a introduction and references of this earlier. See survey I copied my old text below again: For the study of human behaviour and mind, polls (surveys) are major scientific method. I make it simple for people here, to qualify a scientific study, the study should draw conclusions based on the analysis of many of numbers. One of major tasks of surveys are statistical analysis (analysis of numbers). See survey "Statistical survey, a method for collecting quantitative information about items in a population". They are important because they do not limit to a few individuals' opinions, therefore, are more comprehensive and neutral source of information. To put it another way. The older version of the article (before I start to work on it ) mainly listed some academic or activist views. Please provide evidence that the general public really care or support those opinions. Current world population is: 7.029 billion (this does not include past populations). The older version of the article heavily featured individual's opinions. Number of individuals mentioned in the older version of the article, is probably under 50 (are alive or have lived). How representative and neutral is the article? NPOV is one of the most important policy of Wikipedia. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 02:29, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

SlimVirgin said "SSZvH7N5n8 seems to have gained the impression that there is resistance in principle to adding scientific support for animal rights to the article or lead, but there really isn't. It's just that it has to be on-topic, accurate, and carefully sourced." I wonder if SlimVirgin takes her words seriously - the article of Speciesism, which is mentioned in the first paragraph of animal rights, has lots of content from scientists/scientific perspectives. Those content are on-topic, accurate, and carefully sourced scientific information of animal rights. I am sure SliveVirgin has read Speciesism. I can only explain the current omission of science in the leading section as a bias against science. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 04:44, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

SlimVirgin said this about Ryder's images from The Superior Human? :"The first was a copyright violation because unreleased. When this was pointed out, the filmmakers released it" . I request SlimVirgin to provide reliable source for her statement. I already said, this is a untrue statement, the image were released when I first uploaded it. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 05:15, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

On the issue of surveys and polls, I agree it is the interpretation that determines the scientific nature. It's basically the quantification of the data and the qualifification of the analyst that determines the scientific nature of the study. It's ultimately not our call anyway i.e. Wikipedia editors don't get to decide if something is a scientific study or not: if the research is published in a scientific journal or by a scientific publisher then it has been peer reviewed as a scientific study. If it is a telephone poll on The Wright Stuff, then it is simply a poll or a survey, and doesn't belong anywhere near the article, so by changing the title of the section to Attitudes about animal rights we are weakening the threshold for inclusion IMO. Betty Logan (talk) 06:10, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Those surveys I added are published in scientific journals or were conducted by a scientific research institution. It does not matter what do you call them, surveys or polls. Many scientific studies are surveys.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 06:52, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Betty Logan, Having science in the heading is better. It would encourage high quality scientific contribution for the articles.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk)
My reason for changing the header was not that I fail to understand, but that I wanted the header to be useful to the reader. Yes, I know that polls can be conducted rigorously, and these, published I think in peer-reviewed sources, appear to be rigorous polls. But that wasn't my point. My point was that it makes better sense to title content based on what the content says, rather than on how the content was arrived at. It's really beside the point that these studies were or were not "scientific". What matters to the reader is that they provide information about what people feel about animal rights. Science can reveal all kinds of things, but the material currently in this section is specifically about one thing: people's attitudes. So I think we should say so. (There's also a little bit of a pejorative tone to labeling the section "scientific", as though it tries to draw attention to the rest of the page supposedly being "unscientific".)
I'm very sensitive to the issue of not wanting to lower the threshold for inclusion of sources. Certainly, we should not use sub-par sources. But changing the header does not change that standard. The criteria are, as always, determined by WP:RS, along with WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV, and that doesn't change.
(By the way, I didn't understand that claim about the image copyright having somehow suddenly changed, either.) --Tryptofish (talk) 14:21, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Just quickly, I agree with Tryptofish in regard to the title. I'm not questioning whether or not the polls are scientific, but the value from the title to the reader is not how the studies were conducted, but what the studies were about. In this case, the studies were about people's attitudes to animal rights, and the section is about the results rather than the methodologies, so it seems more important to inform the reader about the content rather than the manner in which it was derived. - Bilby (talk) 10:11, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. But I'll go one step further. Even if the polls were scientific, it's unlikely that they were somehow more scientific than other scientific polls, in some noteworthy way that we need to draw attention to it in the section header. The information given in the section is about attitudes about animal rights. It makes no sense whatsoever to put a header on the section, worded to make a big deal about some supposed scientific breakthrough. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:16, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree fully with that. - Bilby (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Regional AR

I will try to address important regions/cultures one by one.

India

I think India should have a independent section/subsection which can include following contents

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-17/india/31355109_1_cpcsea-control-and-supervision-cruelty

  • Arya Samaj influence on vegetarianism, recommended by other. Search "Arya Samaj vegetarianism" in Google book for more information.

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 07:13, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I need to think about this general issue, and the talk page seems to have become somewhat convoluted. :) But just to address a couple of quick points, the statistics you raise are interesting, but on their own they don't help much, simply because we can only infer from them that the numbers of vegetarians and the use of animals in labs relates to a particular view of animal rights. It may be that there are other factors at play (especially in regard to the use of lab animals), so without sources that draw the connection between the figures and animal rights there isn't much we can do with the statistics. (That said, with the lab animals, the paper you are linking to doesn't seem to say that the use of lab animals in India is very low - instead it only says that the publications refering to lab animals is relativly low in the sampled countries, and that figures on animal use are otherwise unavailable for India). The other points are worth thinking about, but I suspect we need to have a more general discourse about what the focus of this article is before venturing down that path, or we'll end up loosing the main issues amongst the discussion. :) - Bilby (talk) 07:58, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
yes, the paper of lab animal use reported totally number of use per nation. Wikipedia has national population statistics, such as List of countries by population. It's very easy to calculate the per capita: (total use)/(population size), very simple arithmetic.
Sorry, but I think there is some confusion, as I'm not worried about per capita figures. My concern is with using that paper to infer anything about the numbers of lab animals used in India. The authors stated that national figures on the use of animals in laboratories were unavailable for India, along with a few other countries. Accordingly, they could only provide figures for the number of scientific publications from India for which animals were used. So we can't use the paper to say that in India the use of animals in laboratories is low, as we don't have access to the figures, and in regard to numbers of publications India comes in 12th out of 142 countries. But I think this is a bit of a red herring, given that the statistics won't help us much anyway. - Bilby (talk) 08:33, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
I do not see the inclusion of the statistics a problem, if word carefully. 1)Those statistics are indicators, factual statements. They can help describe the some aspects of the animal rights/animal uses. . 2) The sources are some of the best international data on the topic in existence. Scientific community does not have things better than that as far as I am aware. 3) In general, having numbers is better than not having any numbers at all, if we talk about neutrality seriously. Wikipedia policy encourages the use of statistics "State facts and statistics, don't be vague or general." see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Plain_and_simple_conflict_of_interest_guide 4) List the statistic on the page does not mean the editors endorse the information. After all, it's the original authors/organizations view points/data. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 09:03, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
Unless we have something that makes the connection between the statistics and animal rights, we can't use them. We can't draw or infer that connection ourselves. If you have a good source that makes the connection between vegetarianism in India and the animal rights debate, or between the statistics on the use of lab animals an India and the debate, then we can include the sources that make that connection, given the usual caveats, and that would be great. But we can't add figures for vegetarianism in India and infer or suggest from them that animal rights is strong in that country. - Bilby (talk) 09:09, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
The connection is on the current animal rights page, major animal rights issues include: use animal as food and in research. "they agree for the most part that animals should no longer be viewed as property, or used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment."SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 09:18, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
The connection needs to be in the publication, not something we infer ourselves. But it seems like a bit of a red herring - we don't have stats on vegetarianism at the moment, we don't have any stats showing the number of animals used in research in India, and meat consumption being low in India isn't the same as animal rights. The discussion really should be on the bigger issue of the article's focus first. - Bilby (talk) 09:38, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
For the source of the connections, please see the source of the sentence I quoted from animal rights. I thought this article has high inclusion standard. To the statistics, it does not has to be presented in a way suggesting India have good animal rights. It can be present as the statistics of major animal rights issues, a factual statement. This is what do I mean by "word carefully". BTW there are other related international statistics which gives good indication of the topics

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 09:51, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm worried that this feels like a tangent, as it is more about what Wikipedia requires from sources than about this article. The short version is that I'm not worried about how the statistics are presented, or whether or not they say that India has a good or bad stance on animal rights. We simply can't use statistics on their own to infer a connection between those statistics and the views of animal rights in a country, unless we have a source specifically making that connection, or those statistics are specifically about animal rights. The sources you provided don't make that connection. Therefore we can't use them in the article ourselves. Anyway, I think I'll leave this here - I'm distracting everyone from the real issue, and I hate to see too many words by me on a talk page. :) - Bilby (talk) 10:05, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your contribution for the discussion. It's well established that meat eating is a major AR issue. Search meat and animal rights in Google book if you are not satisfied with the references of animal rights :). SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 10:15, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Japan

  • Buddhism
  • two Buddhism,animal rights, source list provided by Tryptofish [17], [18]

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 17:11, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

See Japanese cuisine#Non-meat practice and Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. Oda Mari (talk) 08:50, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for responding my request, this is really important! meat avoidance practice and Animal rights law in ancient Japan.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 19:18, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

text from Tokugawa Tsunayoshi "In the 1690s and first decade of the 18th century, Tsunayoshi, who was born in the Year of the Dog, thought he should take several measures concerning dogs. A collection of edicts released daily, known as the Edicts on Compassion for Living Things (生類憐みの令 Shōruiawareminorei?) "SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 19:26, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

text from wikipedia article Slaughterhouse: "In many societies, traditional cultural and religious aversion to slaughter led to prejudice against the people involved. In Japan, where the ban on slaughter of livestock for food[specify] was lifted only in the late 19th century".SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 08:27, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


Indigenous peoples

TBC

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 08:27, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Nietzsche

I added Nietzsche in the article earlier but was removed by other editors. I am adding more sources to support his inclusion.

  • "Avoiding a utilitarian defence of animals, both Schweitzer and Nietzsche find other reasons to make a strong plea for increased sensitivity to animal life and suffering."The sight of blind suffering is the spring of the deepest emotion,' argues Nietzsche." The source is Animal Rights: A Historical Anthology. By Andrew Linzey, Paul A. B. Clarke. It can be found in Google book.
  • Cambridge dictionary define animal rights as" the rights of animals to be treated well, for example by not being used for testing drugs or by not being hunted". http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/animal-rights?q=animal+rights
  • My previous edits
Nietzsche

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: "For man is the cruellest animal. At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto been happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his heaven on earth" [1]. Throughout his writings, he speaks of the human being as an animal[2]. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 19:36, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

To do list and page archiving

Why this talk page apears to be archived more frequently than others. People won't be able to see the past discussion easily. Those are important for the future discussions. I kept some parts of the discussion history in the to do page: Talk:Animal rights/to do.

My recommendations were

  • To do list of the science section
  • Regional AR, India & Japan

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 06:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I've changed the archiving time in this edit from 30 to 60 days, and you can make changes like that too. All of the discussions have been preserved, and can be found using the Archives links at the top of this page. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:13, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Evolution, UNDUE of leading section

Bilby said: Removed Darwn and survey from lead - Darwin doesn't fit here, and it is a poor survey to emphasise in he lead, bordering on synth. " The sentence I added were from the body of the article. The leading section does not cover enough of the scientific aspects of animal rights, which is major UNDUE. "it is a poor survey to emphasise in he lead" please provide reliable source for this statment. I've removed Darwn's name as a cooperative gesture. However, I strongly oppose the under representation of scientific studies in the leading section. This lower the overall standard of the article.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 08:34, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

The mention of Darwin is irrelevant - I'm not sure why you believe that it would be a concern. I have two concerns with the addition. The first was where it was placed. As it was, the paragraph started with a claim about perspectives, which normally would lead into a discussion about different perspectives. But your addition suddenly jumps to history (the theory of evolution changed how people viewed animal rights claim) and then wanders off into the claim that creationists are less likely to believe in animal rights, before returning to the perspectives issue. It needs to be in an appropriate section in the lead, rather than there.
For the second problem, I'd rather turn it around. Do you have a reliable source to show that the survey is significant? It certainly doesn't look like it was. It had 82 respondents, all university undergraduates, so the sample size isn't exactly large. It was not published in a particularly important journal, (the impact factor for that journal appears very low), although it appears that it was peer reviewed. The paper itself then finds something that is largely self-evident - conservative fundamentalists are less likely to believe in animal rights. Has it been widely cited? Is it important? At the moment, it appears to be a minor study with a very small sample size. Good to point to a possible area for further work, but placing it in the lead is giving it a lot of weight. - Bilby (talk) 09:01, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


  • I said this before here: Many people such as some scientists, understand animal rights from a evolutionary perspective. They do not follow any of the political or philosophical approaches in the leading section. This group of people are underrepresented.
  • Bilby has question with the significance: "It had 82 respondents". I ask, how many people's name (and their opinions) are mentioned in this article outside the surveys? Maybe around 50? Quantitative studies can eaily outdo qualitative research in terms of neutrality and importance - If the surveys of a group of people's opinion are not important, then why some politician/philosopher/activist's opinions are more important? Because they worth more than other people? Then why people say all human are equal?
  • I do not think the evaluation of research work that is already published and peer reviewed is the job of wikipedia editors. This is original research. Wikipedia editors may not have required knoweldge in the particular field. I recommend Bilby publish his critisim of the survey in some peer reviewed channels, after this, we can consider it as a reliaible source.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 09:55, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Do you have any evidence to show that the paper you wish to emphasise in the lead is, in any way, significant to the field? If not, why should that paper's findings be emphasised? - Bilby (talk) 10:13, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I always have evidence/source. Search keywords of the field "evolution, animal rights" in Google, It's the first paper, That's how I find it.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 10:33, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I'll take that as a no, then. I'll see if I can find anything, but I think it is unlikely. - Bilby (talk) 10:38, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Ignoring Google ranking suggests COI.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 10:50, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
No. Google rank is a result of search terms, combined with the page rank algorithm. It is not a measure of impact. Academic impact is measured through other factors, such as citations. - Bilby (talk) 11:27, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
"It is not a measure of impact." Disagree. Please provide reliable source for the statment.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 12:04, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
In terms of impact, the paper doesn't turn up in Citeseer, has only two citations in Web of Knowledge, three in Scopus, and six in Google Scholar. It has had no significant impact, but given the small sample size used in the paper's survey and the question it was asking, this isn't surprising. So I guess the next question is whether or not the point that the paper makes - that Christian religious fundamentalists may be less likely to support animal rights than non-fundamentalists - is worth highlighting in the lead. I can't see any cause for emphasising. It may warrant a brief mention in the body, where it is currently covered, so I'm not opposing that, although I wish there was a better paper to base that on, especially as we are effectively relying on a primary source. - Bilby (talk) 13:46, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for confirming that Bilby did find lots of things. According to Bilby this 2007 work has been cited by multiple reliable sources. I also found more webpages and books mention this article using Google and Google book.
  • If primary source is a concern (although wikipedia allows primary sources), it is obvious that we can use those that cited the work as sources. For example this book 'Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies'( By Margo DeMello) has cited the survey and introduced the conclusion.
  • Google outdoes most academic search engines, Bilby's data supports that. I have always used it as my primary reference. Citeseer is mainly in the fields of computer and information science according to the wikipedia article. It is specialized. Bilby is right, the paper does not turn up. Not only the paper, I searched keywords "animal rights" in citeseer, found essentially no relvent results, see: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/search?q=animal+rights . If Bilby takes citesee seriously, please propose the deletion of animal rights article immediately. I'm suprised that Bilby used citeseer as an argument.
  • Overall Bilby's arguments are not supported by the facts. As I already said, if Bilby has critisim of the survey, he should try to publish it in a peer reviewed channel first. Original research does not belong here. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 16:04, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
You really don't seem to understand the process of evaluating sources, as opposed to original research, it seems. Nor what constitutes a significant number of citations. But be that as it may, the book may help - do you have a page number where it discusses the article's findings? - Bilby (talk) 16:18, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
That's ok - I found the reference. It seems to constitute one sentence in the book, and doesn't exactly count as significant, nor does it examine the findings. - Bilby (talk) 16:24, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
You do not seem to have basic academic research skills. But I am happy to teach you step by step. Search the paper title in google book, you will see all relevent books.
Cute. :) - Bilby (talk) 16:35, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

My concern with the material, especially when placed in that prominent way, is that it implies a causal relationship between evolutionary theory and the emergence of animal rights as a concept. But what the cited source shows is only that people who understand evolutionary theory are, statistically, more likely to support an animal rights view. The animal rights view already existed before Darwin, in multiple cultures around the world, so it did not arise as a result of the recognition of evolution. And not everyone who believes in evolution also believes in animal rights. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:26, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

'causal' relationship, where did you see it? The sentence does not implie that. It is a factual statment take directly from the artile. And I do not mind you reword it as long as you preserve the scientific nature of the information. You saw other editor has strong concern for the lake of scientific studies. Take fairness and other editors seriously.

I have major problem with the leading section that only cover political and philosophical approaches. This is cherry picking. I agree that there are cultural approaches, which should also be included in the leading section. I just added the cultural aspect, this addition also addresses the concern of the 'causal' relationship of evolution. I think current leading section is reasonably balanced SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 02:15, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Truly, I have been trying very hard to treat you considerately. (Is there a language difference going on here?) If you feel that I am not treating you fairly, please feel free to seek dispute resolution. As for causality, I bet that vegetarians and vegans are statistically more likely than the general population to support animal rights, but that does not mean that the animal rights movement arose as the result of a high-vegetable diet. I also bet that people who work in agriculture, and people who work in biomedical research (where I can speak from personal experience), are less likely to support animal rights, but that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about where the ideas for animal rights came from. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:40, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
PS: Saying that evolution "revolutionized" the way that people thought about animals does, in this context, directly imply that it revolutionized thinking about the concept of animal rights. Also, saying it in that way goes against WP:PEACOCK. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:08, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
I've removed the second line as well, about the survey. I can certainly respect the interest in it, but I continue to have three issues. The first is, as raised above, it isn't a significant survey, with only a few passing mentioned in the literature. The second is that the sample size is very small - something that was noted in at least one of the mentions, and means that the paper is of interest as an initial study, but can't be extended to make a strong statement about animal rights attitudes in general - a sample of 82 university students is what you run to look at if there is value in a wider study, rather than to make generalised conclusions.
Otherwise, the concern was that the findings didn't mirror the statement we were making. The statement in this article was "A survey found that proponents of evolution advocate animal rights more so than creationists and believers in intelligent design." But the paper only found that strong religious fundamentalists who also believe in creationism are less likely to believe in animal rights than weaker religious fundamentalists, and that atheists and agnostics are more likely to believe in animal rights. It was not possible to adequately separate out the religious fundamentalism from views on evolution for a number of reasons, so we can't pull out one factor, and in the discussion the authors look at a variety of causes for the lack of support for animal rights amongst christian fundamentalists, all of which they say will need further research. They did view belief in evolution as a factor, but it is unclear if it was a causal factor, and the significance of it as opposed to general religious views was unclear.
It would be an interesting subject to study, but to be honest I can't see how you can pull out the creationism variable from religious fundamentalism. I suppose with a large enough sample you could look for religious fundamentalists who believe in evolution, but arguably people who believe in evolution won't be regarded as strong fundamentalists. And, of course, atheists who believe in creationism are in short supply. But I guess that's not a problem for us. - Bilby (talk) 22:43, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
That strikes me as very reasonable. I figured that the sentence about revolutionizing was so obviously out of line with the source that a compromise might have been to remove just it, and to retain that second sentence, but your reasoning strikes me as being sound. We shouldn't be trying to push the point that Darwin's work played some special role in the development of the idea of animal rights (and animal rights specifically, not animal welfare or other good feelings towards animals in a general sense), unless we really have the sourcing for it, and a survey like this one doesn't come close. But I continue to think that it would be fine to have a section, not the lead, in which we summarize a variety of polling data about views on animal rights. But it shouldn't just be polls about evolution, as though that has some sort of special status within the subject of animal rights. Rather, it should be polling of all sorts, pertaining to attitudes about animal rights. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree entirely with you and SSZvH7N5n8 about having more information about polling. Having more survey data about attitudes to animal rights is a great approach. - Bilby (talk) 23:16, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, and that's a good foundation for, I hope, getting our discussions back on track. But I want to underline: more information on polling, but not in the lead, and not focusing only on evolution. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:19, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Problem of the heading, Historical development

The heading 'Historical development' does not represent a worldwide view of the subject. conditions should be added. It's the historical development of some groups of people. These groups consist about 12% current world population. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:38, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

History in the lead

I've removed Henry Salt form the lead for a bit, as I'm not sure why he was emphasised in favour of others in the history section, so it seemed unbalanced - if there was only one person to be mentioned, I'd probably go with Rousseau, Bentham or Martin, but picking one is tricky. :) Is it worth developing a history paragraph for the lead so that Salt and the others can be mentioned there? My main concern is whether or not it would be better to keep the lead tighter on the topic about what animal rights encompasses, as is currently the state, or if it would be ok to broaden it. From the perspective of the Manual of Style it is probably better to broaden it, but I'm open to keeping it more focused. I gather from SSZvH7N5n8's tag that broadening it is the way to go? - Bilby (talk) 19:17, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Short of scientific studies

Too much text above. I do not have time to reply the points one by one or teach people at this moment. I will try to get key points out.

  • Tryptofish mentioned the contrast of animal welfare and rights, I already provided a dictionary definition of animal rights. According to it animal rights can/should 'include' animal welfare. In fact this article has content of animal welfare, such as RSPCA.
  • NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH. Editors should not judge the fields they are not familiar with. Plenty of published work had smaller sample size. Sample size along is not the measurement of the quality.
  • I am displeased some people do not read so I have to repeat.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:45, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
  • There are plenty of sources suggest that scientific understanding of human-animal relationship (evolution is an important part) helped animal rights (treat animal well). I will add more references of this if I have time. I hope those who disagree to it can perform a basic academic research on the topic, then provide RELIABLE SOURCES that saying evolution did not help. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 02:01, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Please discuss the rename of the article (ancient world) SSZvH7N5n8 (talk)
  • Can you stop assume things. Adding the survey and evolution is not to promote Darwin's role. It's to increase the percentage of scientific content. The lead does not really cover science. I pointed out this repeatedly. The sentences were picked up from current article because nothing else about science seems be more important. Unfortunately there isn't much scientific content to choose from. Because my attempts of expanding science were harshly disrupted. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 04:10, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Rename article

I thinks this article better to be renamed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_status_of_animals_in_the_ancient_world what is the best way to do it?

This article is not only about the ancient world. Most if not all religions/traditions mentioned in the article always exist. A better title would be something like 'cultural difference in moral status of animals' or 'moral status of animals in different parts of the world'. 10:50, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Be more specific, should we create a sperate article and delete/keep the old one?SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 13:29, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't have a problem with the exiting article or its title, but I also don't have a problem with a new article giving an account of cultural differences either. Although it might be better to have a renaming discussion over at Talk:Moral status of animals in the ancient world, rather than here. - Bilby (talk) 19:20, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

：：：I posted the issue on that talk page long times ago, but nobody responded. I thought there are more active editor here. If we create a new article and keep the old one, I can foresee there will be large amount of duplicated information. Rename would be a better choice in terms of the long term development of the articlesSSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 02:43, 19 September 2012 (UTC)


Destructive editing environment

I do not appreciate the destructive editings on this article. The attitudes are very often indiscriminate disaproval/reject of changes, insteaded of using an inclusive/incremental approach. This is not good for the growth/neutrality of the article.

For example, I changed the last section's heading to 'scientific study' ealier (the revision http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&oldid=506700687), I was going to add more scientific content and informed other editors of my plan. But the heading was quickly changed back before I could add anything. The hash responses made me no longer felt like volunteering to improve the section, althoug I already provided a to do list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Animal_rights/to_do#To_to_list_of_the_science_section.

I hope the articles did not lost many contributions like this.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 13:22, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I do not think anyone is being harsh with you. Wikipedia works by consensus. The fact that you do not necessarily convince other people with your arguments does not mean that those other people aren't giving you a fair listen. If you feel that you are being treated unfairly, my advice to you is to make use of Wikipedia's dispute resolution mechanisms. However, my very sincere advice to you is that you will get the same response there that you just got from me. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:30, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


  • "you do not necessarily convince other people". Did Tryptofish mean "you do not necessarily convince ME"? There is a fundamental difference between the two sentences. Tryptofish are intitled to has his opinions. Unfortunately not everyone agree with him. Betty logan and I (two people) supported the scientific heading and debated with him. Tryptofish remove it however. Is this fairness?
  • What Tryptofish said to the section of scientific studies is this " No. There is nothing in this section discussing the scientific-ness of the polls." It can be found in this revision history: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&oldid=506737538

He refer the summary of several scientific studies (peer reviewed) as "NOTHING... discussing scientific-ness ". NOTHING? Seriously? This is among the most unscientific statments I have ever seen.

  • The fact: other people explicitly expressed concerns of the imbalance of the article (see archieves of the talk page). Such as short of scientific studies and having too much emphasis of history. I am working on address the concerns in spare time. Take other editors opinions seriously. They are not joining the debate does not mean they do not have opinions. People may not have the time.
  • My very sincere advice to Tryptofish is that he should read broadly about different disciplines of science and their research methods: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scientific_disciplines. After that, he would understand what I have told him. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 01:46, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
I know this has been raised before, but the distinction is between a scientific methodology and a scientific topic/finding. Surveys may provide a scientific methodology, but that doesn't mean that they are always looking at scientific topics. People's attitudes towards animal rights, even when gathered through a good survey tool with some solid analysis, are not a scientific explanation of animal rights. Thus the consensus was to title the section after what was being studied - attitudes towards animal rights - rather than after the type of research used to determine them. - Bilby (talk) 02:13, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
  • "even when gathered through a good survey tool with some solid analysis, are not a scientific explanation of animal rights. ". I am sorry you did not read, nobody name the section "scientific explanation of animal rights". The heading was something like "scientific studies of animal rights."

Scientific studies can include many things, such as scientific description of a research subject. You do not seem to understand science.

  • "the consensus was", sorry, I did not see there were any consensus. I saw major disagreements. Do you or anyone get to decide what the consensus was?
  • That heading is not my concern for the moment, I just want to highlight the destructive environment here. If you are constructive, add more content into the article, make it more balanced. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 02:31, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
You're right - as a correction, the consensus was to name the section after the material being studied, (personal attitudes), rather than exclusively the manner in which it was studied. - Bilby (talk) 02:52, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
No, what you said was not the consensus, consensus is "a generally accepted opinion or decision among a group of people" (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/consensus?q=consensus). The decision was not generally accepted, there were people disagree with it. However this is not my concern for the moment. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:01, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's a new one, someone telling me that I haven't read enough about science. Anyway, as I have said repeatedly, anyone who thinks that I am not respecting consensus should feel free to take me to dispute resolution. In fact, I'll even offer to initiate a request for more editors to examine the concerns here. Would you like me to do that? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:43, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

See, I was trying to be cooperative. So when I put forward the arguments , I also provided common scientific knowledge of the field (see talk archive ), such as why surveys/poll are scientific methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Animal_rights/Archive_6#Polls_are_scientific_studies. Because I understand people here are very diverse. But I will never need to teach my scientist colleagues any things like that when we discuss. It's unfortunate two editors had to teach Tryptofish these basic knowledge earlier. I can tell how much Tryptofish know about science in this field by all comments he have posted so far: not enough. When people are silent, do not assume they do not have opinions. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:09, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

At this point, it's getting difficult for me to ascertain whether this is a matter of WP:COMPETENCE or a matter of a very skillful troll, but I'm starting not to care. I will support those edits that I think are improvements, and oppose those that I think are not. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
At this point, it's getting easy for me to ascertain whether this is a matter of a skillful troll, or a matter of WP:COMPETENCE, but I never really care. "Tryptofish is entitled to has his opinions. Unfortunately not everyone agree with him. "SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 02:59, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

DeLeeuwa study

I've had to remove the material about DeLeeuwa study. In looking at how to expand that section, I found that it was currently almost a copy and paste of the material in the abstract available here. While I'm very open to re-adding it with different wording, we won't be able to use that particular wording. I'd also suggest that we write the piece based on the paper's discussion section, as I attempted to do, rather than on the abstract, as the former describes the intent of the research, while the latter describes the findings.

My original rewording was:

A small survey in 2007 found that people who were strong Christian fundamentalists and believers in creationism were less likely to support animal rights than those who were less fundamentalist in their beliefs. This supported earlier findings, such as a 1992 study which found that 48% of animal rights activists who responded were atheists or agnostic.

The second reference was to Galvin, Shelley L.; Herzog Jr., Harold A. (1992) "Ethical Ideology, Animal Rights Activism, And Attitudes Toward The Treatment Of Animals." Ethics & Behavior 2.3. Pages 141–149, which I added because it provided context, and was one of the papers which DeLeeuwa et al had referenced as informing their study. I'm very happy to have an alternate approach, though. - Bilby (talk) 03:47, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

  • The copyright claim is ridiculous. Wording is not copyrighted. Otherwise Bilby violates copyrights all the time: he used same wording many other used before for most of his sentences. Don't deviate attention and use this excuse to sneak in content of NOR SYN .
  • People wrote research papers/books before can easily understand the overall views of the author is in the abstract/conclusions, it 'overrides' the rest of the work.
  • Again NOR SYN
  • I am fine with adding more papers. However what Bilby put is not from the paper, NOR. I will reword it. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 04:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
My primary concern is the copyright violation. In the article, you added:
A survey in 2007 found that proponents of evolution, who tend to view species as interconnected, advocate animal rights more so than creationists and believers in intelligent design.
In the source article, it states:
Further, proponents of evolution—who tend to view species as interconnected—would advocate animal rights more so than creationists and believers of intelligent design theory.
It isn't a major chunk of the original article, but it is still an almost direct copy and paste of the source, which is something we can't have in Wikipedia. So I've had to remove it. It can be added back, but will need to be worded differently.
In regards to rewording, the abstract describes the hypothesis, and that quote comes from the hypothesis that they studied. I the discussion, they state:
"Individuals high in religious fundamentalism and adherents of creationist views of human origins displayed lower support for animal rights; conversely, low fundamentalists and those who believe in naturalistic evolution were more supportive of animal rights."
They did make a finding similar to what you describe, but it wasn't quote the same as their original hypothesis, as they are unable to fully separate views stemming from creationism from views stemming from other aspects of religion, so they grouped them together. Their findings support their hypothesis, but don't prove it, so our wording should reflect the findings.
At any rate, my primary concern is not to include a copyright violation. I'd like to discuss the wording, but that's not the primary reason why I removed the text. - Bilby (talk) 06:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

You already said, the sentence is not EXACTLY the same. Therefor not a copy.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 06:50, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

The issue is close paraphrasing, which unfortunately is still a copyright violation. It doesn't need to be exactly the same words to be a problem. - Bilby (talk) 06:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Your source just support that my paraphrasing is appropriate. The source is clearly attributed. I ask you stop post on my talk page from now on. Your harassment is not welcomed.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 06:57, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

  • "I gather that you may not be very familiar with basic academic principles, such as copyrights and research methods. Wikipedia can't accept unacademic editings. I'm happy to continue discussions on how to reword it, but you can't remove to avoid the problem."
  • Bilby claims to be interested in rewording, but why he continuously wants to remove? Is this real constructive? The actions speak about the thoughtsSSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 07:13, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I've been working on improving the worldwide view of the article. More info of Africa should be addedSSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 09:10, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I did reword the section to remove the copyright problems while bringing it in line with the paper's findings. You reverted it. If you are unhappy with my wording, and unwilling to provide your own, then we're forced to remove the copyrighted text until we solve the impasse. An please don't express your thoughts as quotes, per above - it makes it appear that you are quoting me, when it is not the case. - Bilby (talk) 10:20, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Untrue and misleading ( Bilby's description above ). My edits was permitted by close paraphrasing. There were clear mention of the source in the original sentence: Said it's from the survey and a citation was provided. Also I provided rewording , added the author's name to make the inline citation more obvious. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&oldid=513501749
  • Unfortunately some inexperienced editors take copyright dogmatically. The purpose of copyright is to benefit intellectual producers. I am an intellectual producer. When people present my work and opinions, I want people stick to what I said as much as possible. I do not appreciate those who misrepresents/mutate my ideas. The more change made to the sentences, the more chance the meaning is changed, the less respect to the original author.
  • Editors should not change original authors' view. Please respect the authors, as what I have done.

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 14:15, 20 September 2012 (UTC)


You did not understand what is the usage of Quotation mark. "Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning " It meant I was not very serious when said that.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 11:40, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I've reworded the section to try find a compromise. The copyvio has been removed, but I've retained the claim from the abstract, while adding the slightly more specific findings from the paper. So it has both components being discussed. - Bilby (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

This version is a lot better. It seems it no longer contains Bilby's original research. However, I think it's better to cite the DeLeeuwa study for the second part, because Bilby got the idea from DeLeeuwa paper. Bilby should respect their intellectual input. Now it look like Bilby found the second source independently. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 14:15, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Lead section--"same" consideration seems questionnable

In the lead section, I wonder if the phrase "should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings" should be replaced with "should be afforded some consideration"?

This would make clear that some people who support legal rights for animals do not believe that those rights must necessarily rise to the same level as human rights.

I'm not going to make this change unless the idea garners some support from others, so I thought I'd check. ChicagoDilettante (talk) 23:31, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it is well worth considering - I'd like to check why the sources make that claim, though, in case I'm missing something. I'm pretty sure I have a copy of Taylor somewhere, so I'll see if I can dig it up.
That said, depending on the ethical theory, it varies from "some" to "the same". So "some" might be a bit too strong in the other direction. Perhaps "should be considered as with the similar interests of human beings" or something along those lines. - Bilby (talk) 12:21, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
  • ChicagoDilettante, thanks for the comment, I thought of the same issue.
  • The opinion should be included, there is diverse understanding of animal rights. The article’s definition was very narrow, it need to be expended.
  • We need to find some reliable sources for "some" though, although I personally agree with it to certain extend.
  • I do not like to see 'same' to be removed. There are plenty of people/source agree to it. such as peter singer
  • Maybe we can change it to: "should be afforded the same or similar consideration as the similar interests of human beings". SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 14:24, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't have access to the research materials to find citations. However, suppose someone believed that torturing a human is morally wrong and should result in a 10-year prison sentence for the torturer, whereas torturing a mouse is morally wrong but not as wrong and should only result in only a one-year prison sentence. I think virtually everyone would consider this an "animal rights" view. It clearly recognizes a mouse's legal right not to be tortured. Yet the current use of the word "same" would NOT consider this an "animal rights" view. This is why I think the current language with "same" should be changed. ChicagoDilettante (talk) 16:00, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Same consideration isn't equals to same treatment SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 16:24, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Structure, science first

I think scientific content should be on the top, just like the structure of altruism . I post below message earlier. Altruism has a much better proportion between science and the arts than animal rights. For most articles, if science is relevant, it should be heavily featured. Scientific methods are more objective. Neutrality is the foundation of Wikipedia SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 20:46, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

It isn't necessarily the case that altruism and animal rights have the same bases in academic study, and Wikipedia determines due weight by what secondary and tertiary sources say, not by editors' opinions of which disciplines are more objective. And I say that as someone who also considers scientific methods to be more objective. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:42, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
What said above is SYN of wikipedia policy SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 23:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
Or maybe a SIN of SYNTH, which applies to content, not policies. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
What said above is still SYN SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 23:47, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Tryptofish's censorship of pro animal rights information, COI

Tryptofish has repetitively removed following well-sourced information from the article and the lead.

  • Scientific studies have provided evidence in support of animal rights.
  • Scientific evidence is blurring many boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals.

The first sentence was added by him. However he does not allow this to be added in the lead. Although it summarizes at least half of the scientific content.

This is a matter of COI, NPOV. It's easy to see why Tryptofish want to suppress scientific evidence that supports animal rights: He implied in multiple occasions he does not like many things about animal rights. Editors should not try to censor the other sides of the opinions. What they can do however is adding their side of opinions from reliable source. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Not the first time I've been attacked on this talk page, and I doubt that it will be the last. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:32, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

My comment above is a factual description of a matter that is related to the article.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 00:38, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Just a note, Tryptofish changed the auto archiving interval of the talk page from 60 days to only 7 days after I started this section, but no explain was provided, This is his change: A http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AAnimal_rights&diff=513905494&oldid=513828611 For those who is not familiar with auto archiving, the change means the conversation on the talk page will be removed after 60 days. But Tryptofish wanted them to be removed after only 7 days. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 05:27, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Heading of the surveys

Tryptofish changed the heading to "human attitudes". However most of the contents of this article, such as historical development , philosophical and legal views are 'human attitudes'. The whole animal rights article is about "human attitudes" to animal rights, not "chimpanzee attitudes" or "chicken attitudes". naming the heading 'human attitudes' is unacademic. SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 05:43, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Tryptofish has body odor and farts a lot

As per the threads above. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Science blurring boundaries

Tryptofish removed a sentence from lead, he replaced the same sentence in the body which does not make sense.

  • The original sentence "Scientific evidence is blurring many boundaries between humans and nonhuman animals."
  • It Was replaced by "Such evidence suggests similarities between humans and nonhuman animals."

"Such evidence", Which evidence? This is not from the cited source. The lead should summarized the content. Why it can not be there? his edits of the removal and insert

SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 14:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The original sentence is a controversial opinion. It may have adherents in the scientific community, but it shouldn't be presented as established fact. The lead should be objective and summarize non-controversial, factual information that is beyond dispute. Disputed opinions can be mentioned later in the article. Joe Bodacious (talk) 00:11, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

It may be a controversy, and I agree that other sides of opinion can be included. But at the time of posting, no reliable source has been provided to support the other side of the opinions. Therefore, the editing was a violation of Wikipedia principles, such as NOR. =) SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 02:50, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Advocacy language in lead

I must object to this edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&curid=7116046&diff=514225236&oldid=514215831 The term "non-human animals" is favored by animal rights activists because it suggests that there is no clear distinction between humans and animals. This is disputed, and should not be used in the lead, because it makes the article look like an advocacy article. It could be used elsewhere in the article with a cited source. Editor Bilby replaced "Animals are entitled to rights" with "animals are entitled to the possession of their own lives," saying in his summary that "surprisingly animal rights isn't necessarily about rights." I think it might be appropriate to present some evidence to support that claim, but regardless, "possession of their own lives" is also advocacy language. The lead should be kept carefully neutral. Joe Bodacious (talk) 00:58, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Wording that section is very tricky, and personally I've very open to alternatives. I'm certainly open to removing "non-human", although I don't see that as particularly problematic. The main problem is the statement "Animals are entitled to rights" as much of the debate has nothing to do with rights. Singer, for example, is not a rights advocate, and would deny that they exist. Indeed, the existence of human rights beyond an artificial construct is also in much debate - rights theory is only a subset of ethics, and it is perfectly viable to assign moral value without presupposing rights.
In regard to the current wording, it doesn't state that animals are in possession of their own lives, but that animal rights is about the claim that they are. This stems from the basic claim that in animal rights, the animals are not our possessions, and therefore need to be regarded separately. But this isn't making a claim about whether or not this statement is true. So the query is whether or not there is a better way of wording the central common stance of the animal rights concept. - Bilby (talk) 01:13, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I believe that "non-human animals" should be left in this sentence in the lead. Humans are simply an animal, in particular a species of ape closely related to chimpanzees, and somewhat more distantly related to gorillas. This is non-controversial within the scientific community and is based on genome studies. It has nothing to do with animal rights or the animal rights movement, though the animal rights movement may have its own reasons for advocating this view. In any event, I believe it is correct to refer to animals in this context as "non-human animals." On the other hand, if someone believes it's a convention on Wikpedia to refer to non-human animals as simply "animals" and is able to provide a citation to this, then that convention should be followed. Otherwise, "non-human animals" should remain as is. ChicagoDilettante (talk) 01:36, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
First, I must object to remove nonhuman. ChicagoDilettante said "This is non-controversial within the scientific community", I agree to it. Scientific and dictionary definitions of animals both include humans and nonhuman animals. It is not a advocacy language, it is a scientific language. Second, I agree with Bilby, rights is only a subset of animal rights. Finally, the proposed change did not cite any reliable source.SSZvH7N5n8 (talk) 03:35, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't feel very strongly either way. I partly agree with Joe B, that we need to steer clear of adopting the animal rights POV in Wikipedia's voice, but I also recognize that there really isn't that much controversy about the underlying science (as much as there's never-ending semantic controversy about it on Wikipedia). I tend to agree with Bilby about not simply saying that it's about "rights", partly because of the sourcing indicating that Singer et al. actually frame it differently, and partly because saying, in effect, that animal rights is about rights for animals, is just stating the obvious. Although I recognize that the subjects-of-lives language is an animal rights POV, that part of the sentence is saying what the animal rights POV is, so there's nothing objectionable about saying it in those words. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:27, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I read through the article and the overall tone was not entirely neutral. I would say an expansion of the criticism and commonly seen problems with animal rights ideology should perhaps be expanded on. Additionally, what are the negative effects from laws that criminalize "animal rights abuse" on people. Consequently, do animals even deserve legal protection at all? 70.101.144.171 (talk) 22:44, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Animal Advocacy

Semantic purists AND advocates of animal rights would (or might) object to uncritically redirecting the animal advocacy article to this article, since not all animal advocacy is the advocacy of rights for nonhuman persons. MaynardClark (talk) 23:18, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree; animal protectionism and animal welfare are probably equally valid as redirect targets. I doubt that redirecting "animal advocacy" to any single page will really work. Perhaps, instead of a redirect, it should be a disambiguation page? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:28, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Hey, YES! Now, to me, that makes MUCH more sense logically!MaynardClark (talk) 00:07, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done. Please see Animal advocacy. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:03, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

The Section on Nazis and Hitler should be removed from the discussion of

Dear editors of the Animal-Rights Wikipedia page,

Thank you for your work on an excellent article about animal rights. However, I believe that the section on adult Hitler and Nazi Germany (Tierschutzgesetz) should be excluded because it is not relevant to the history or concept of animal-rights, but rather confuses and obscures the issue. I see that “animal protection in Nazi Germany” has it’s own wikipedia article, but that does not mean that they actually realized the concept of animal rights in a way that is relevant to the history of animal rights in the western world.

Firstly, as is stated in your own article, the concept of animal-rights arises as a subset of the idea of compassion to all sentient life forms. This is the principle view of all animal rights philosophers, as well as activists and promoters in practice. Just as people who focus on the promotion of GBLT rights will not support racism towards coloured people, people who truly understand animal-rights will not promote violence to a sub group of humans based on race, etc. Note that every philosopher and supporter of animal rights in your article was someone who promoted it in conjunction with the holistic idea of compassion to humans, with the single exception of Hitler and the Nazis. Occasionally there may be other such deranged individuals, but they do not represent the mature AR philosophy or movement any more that some GBLT activist who advocated killing off anti-GBLT cultures would represent that movement.

The Nazi understanding of protection towards animals seemed to be limited to Hitler and a small group of his cult. He has been called a vegetarian buy some, but really was a "flexitarian" according to your article and that of the Wikipedia article “Adolf Hitler and Vegetarianism”, since he made various exceptions. It is obvious that he had an incredible bias towards certain arbitrary cultures and ethnicities, and an extreme violence and disregard for others. Somehow, in his strange thinking process, certain animals and environmental concepts were included with those he held in high regard, others such as rats were held in low regard. This is no different than those people who revere their pet animal yet accept the killing of of other animals. As such, this is an example of biased thinking, speciesism, etc. It is not animal rights philosophy or practice.

Also noted from the wikipedia article on “Animal Protection in Nazi Germany” that the idea of protecting animals was a method of discriminating against Jewish people. Again, this is not in keeping with the philosophy or practice of animal rights. According to this article, Nazis were fond of symbolism that made their race seem superior in the natural order. They associated and revered predatory or aesthetic animals, while associating other races with prey. The article also states how they disbanded non-Nazi animal protection organizations.

Lastly, your own article discusses how animal testing laws were revoked by the Nazis for the good of the masses.again this shows that are inconsistent idea of protection. Also, practically speaking, the global violence and war they promoted was obviously bound to affect millions of animals. This is like anyone saying they "love" animals but in their various pursuits they directly cause the torture and killing of animals. Simply put, an actual animal rights advocate would not drop millions of bombs, or accelerate resource extraction for the purpose of war, all of which would result in the death of millions of animals and humans.

In summary, the Hitler and some Nazis had a bizarre, fragmented and contradictory bias towards some animals at some times, that was not based on the root idea of compassion towards all life. I think that section should be excluded from the history of animal rights since since it is inconsistent with the principle idea, and also confuses the idea for readers.

I would also suggest that you could elaborate on two areas in your article. Under the heading of “historical Development in the West” it would be relevant to write more about vegetarian and vegan societies in the west, including the Toronto Vegetarian Association (which has a vegetarian festival every year attended by over 35000 visitors), and others in the western world. You have mentioned PETA, but not other large organization such as Mercy for Animal, and the work they do such as undercover investigations. The film called “Earthlings” is also particularly groundbreaking and could be elaborated (it is listed in your section on films).

Lastly, I would encourage you to say a bit more the section of “Indian Subcontinent”, and in particular the role of Jainism. Please see and link the following wikipedia article called “Ahimsa in Jainism”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism.

Thanks to all of you for your hard work and kind attention to this article you have developed.

Tushar

Dr. Tushar Mehta Mehtat (talk) 18:31, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia content is based on content verifiable from published reliable sources. We do not base content on the opinions of contributors. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:29, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Lead image is a bit racist

leave this guy alone - his likeness and personality rights should not showcase animal rights controversy

The current lead image shows a poor man in a developing country busking for small change with a monkey. No one in this line of work makes much money and this is always a poverty or fringe career option.

The major problem with animal rights is not that they are exploited by the poor who are trying to survive, but rather that they are exploited by the rich for luxury uses. It is a bit racist to showcase animal rights problems as something to blame on people in the developing world. I am not sure what kind of picture should be in the lead but not this one. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:32, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

- Although I would be willing to challenge the notion that animals are necessarily exploited by the rich and not the poor (I would argue both unfortunately), the point @ Blue Rasberry is making concerning the photo being inadequate is totally valid I think. This image could definately be sending the wrong signal to readers. We should probably look for an image that portrays obvious animal rights infringements, independent of any related human related social circumstances. Ideally a photo with no human present in it I imagine? Would taking an image of an animal alone, depicting its suffering of due to the result of an intensive industrial farming activity be more appropriate perhaps? Dr Killian Levacher

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Animal rights. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

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I have just added archive links to one external link on Animal rights. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

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Eurocentric Bias

This article suffers from Eurocentric bias, as it underemphasises the contributions of non-western societies for animal rights. The section on India should be further populated.8.28.179.209 (talk) 19:24, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

No it doesn't, there simply isn't anyone who wants to write about it. If you want to expand the section do it yourself. --Laber□T 12:50, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Animal rights. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

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ISS 310

Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you? Yes, everything in the article is relevant and it went in chronological order throughout the different centuries. I believe the article could have talked more about the religious standpoint of animal life. It briefly touched on Indian and Islamic beliefs.


Check a few citations. Do the links work? Is there any close paraphrasing or plagiarism in the article? Everything in the article from what I can tell as been cited properly. There are well over 100 citations and references in this page. I clicked on #13, #47, and #109, which brought me down to the bottom of the page where the whole citation was. From there, I was able to click on other citations where the journal name was posted and follow it directly to the website.


Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? Yes, the article is neutral. In the second page on the Wikipedia page it mentions that animal rights is a controversial topic and that they are many viewpoints. They bounce off the ideas of abolitionists, sentiocentrism theory, and utilitarian. This framework is continued throughout the introduction of the page.

2601:246:C104:1190:510A:CBE2:1B6F:4680 (talk)Stephanie Deutsch 9/17/162601:246:C104:1190:510A:CBE2:1B6F:4680 (talk) 15:00, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

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This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

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Archive 1←Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6Archive 7

Pop culture?

I'm not sure the new popular culture list adds much of value to the page. What do other editors think? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:55, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't like the pop culture sections since they are usually unsourced and fairly random. If the section stays, I'd rather see it as a paragraph discussing how ALF is depicted in pop culture, which would require refs and might be more valuable in the article than a simple list. Bob98133 (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree with that. I'd add that I am leaning towards deleting the section, in its present form. It's mostly unsourced, and the content that does not duplicate information already available on the page seems rather trivial and uninformative. I'd support a paragraph discussion if, per secondary sources, there was a case that it shows aspects of how ALF is perceived by others, either favorably or unfavorably, but this just looks to me like an unsourced trivia list. Any objections to deleting it? --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is going to argue for keeping this section in its present form, so I'm going to delete it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:21, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
OK, well here it is for future reference so maybe a paragragh could be written:
  • Folk musician David Rovics performs many songs in defence of the ALF.
  • The ALF were fictionalized in the 2005 novel The Cause by Jane Mann.
  • The ALF were fictionalized in the 2006 novel Animal Instinct by Dorothy H. Hayes.
  • The ALF were fictionalized in the 2001 novel Rage and Reason by Michael Tobias.
  • The ALF were fictionalized in the 2002 British movie 28 Days Later.
  • The ALF were fictionalized in the 1996 movie 12 Monkeys.
  • The 2010 movie Bold Native centres on the ALF.[3]
  • Featured in the episode Animal Rites from Season 5 of Numb3rs.
  • The 2006 Shannon Keith documentary, Behind The Mask centres on the ALF. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.96.27.110 (talk) 20:41, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ The Selected Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. ISBN:9781604593327 Wilder Publications 2008-04-21
  2. ^ http://www.sciy.org/2010/06/10/6286/
  3. ^ http://boldnative.com/
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